Perhaps it was just this very ease and excitement of having booked anyone as perfect as young Kennilworth for the part of Someone with a Future that made me act as impulsively as I did regarding Ann Woltor.
We were sitting in our room in a Washington hotel before a very smoky fireplace one rather cross night in late January when I confided the information to my Husband.
"Oh, by the way, Jack," I said quite abruptly, "I've invited Ann Woltor for Rainy Week."
"Invited whom?" questioned my Husband above the rim of his newspaper.
"Ann Woltor," I repeated.
"Ann—what?" persisted my Husband.
"Ann Woltor," I re-emphasized.
"Who's she?" quickened my Husband's interest very faintly.
"Oh, she's a woman," I explained—"or a Girl—that I've been meeting 'most every day this last month at my hair-dresser's. She runs the accounts there or something and tries to keep everybody pacified. And reads the darndest books, all highbrow stuff. You'd hardly expect it! Oh, not modern highbrow, I mean, essays as bawdy as novels, but the old, serene highbrow,—Emerson and Pater and Wordsworth,—books that smell of soap and lavender, as well as brains. Reads 'em as though she liked 'em, I mean! Comes from New Zealand I've been told. Really, she's rather remarkable!"
"Must be!" said my Husband. "To come all the way from New Zealand to land in your hair-dresser's library!"