Down the hall sped a figure in a pongee bathrobe, corded at the waist, slim and sleek as a goldfish. Charley.
"I heard you come in. Finished? Then sit and talk sociable while I dress. You can speed a bit on the way downtown and make it. Step on the ol' batteries. Please! Did you fix things with Gussie?"
"Yeh," Gussie answered, comfortably, but she wore a puzzled frown. "She fix. Judge is woman. Never in my life——"
"Gussie, ma'am, will you let me have my breakfast tray in the sun-parlour? It's such a glummy morning. That's a nice girl. About five minutes."
And it wasn't more than five. Lottie, watching Charley in the act of dressing wondered what that young woman's grandmother or great-aunt would have thought of the process. She decided that her dead-and-gone great-grandmother—that hoop-skirted, iron-stayed, Victorian lady all encased in linings, buckram, wool, wire, merino, and starch—would have swooned at the sight. Charley's garments were so few and scant as to be Chinese in their simplicity. She wore, usually, three wispy garments, not counting shoes and stockings. She proceeded to don them now. First she pulled the stockings up tight and slick, then cuffed them just below the knee. This cuff she then twisted deftly round, caught the slack of it, twisted that rope-like, caught the twist neatly under a fold, rolled the fold down tight and hard three inches below the knee and left it there, an ingenious silken bracelet. There it stayed, fast and firm, unaided by garter, stay, or elastic. Above this a pair of scant knickers of jersey silk or muslin; a straight little shirt with straps over the shoulders or, sometimes, just a brassière that bound the young breasts. Over this slight foundation went a slim scant frock of cloth. That was all. She was a pliant wheat-sheaf, a gracile blade, a supple spear (see verses "To C.K." in Poetry Magazine for February, signed Jesse Dick). She twisted her hair into a knot that, worn low on the neck, would have been a test for anyone but Charley. She now pursed her lips a little critically, and leaned forward close to her mirror. Charley's lips were a little too full, the carping said; the kind of lips known as "bee-stung." Charley hated her mouth; said it was coarse and sensual. Others did not think so. (See poem "Your Lips" in Century Magazine, June.)
"There!" she said and turned away from the mirror. The five minutes were just up.
"Meaning you're dressed?"
"Dressed. Why of——"
"Sketchy, I calls it. But I suppose it's all right. You're covered, anyway. Only I hope your grandmother'll never witness the sight I've seen this morning. You make me feel like an elderly Esquimau sewed up for the winter."
Charley shrugged luxuriously. "I hate a lot of clothes."