I
When Janet awoke at eleven, it took her several moments to recollect that she was in Cornelia's apartment in Kips Bay, where Claude had left her before dawn. She could hear Cornelia bustling about in the living room, but she stayed in bed a little longer to luxuriate in memories of the preceding night.
She got lightly out of bed and stood before the mirror over the chiffonier. But she was less preoccupied with the image in the looking glass than with mental pictures of the night before.
In the bright light of day, the glamour of some of these pictures took on the effect of tinsel. But Janet could still thrill to the excitement of the raid on the Lyceum, the pell-mell escape, the violent dispersal of the mobs in Murray Hill and the hurried collection of a troop of Outlaw refugees and their nocturnal march through Kips Bay streets under the leadership of Claude Fontaine. It had been a very festive troop, swelled by stragglers all the way to the Lorillard tenements, where the party camped in Charlotte Beecher's double flat.
Of the long merrymaking that followed, Janet cared to remember only the occasions when Claude Fontaine was at her side and at her service. How vividly she could picture him in the dashing part of Charles Surface, his handsome face tinted with rich, young blood, and his eyes of such brightness and depth that surely no infamy could ever dull them!
A knock cut this day dreaming short.
"How do you do, Araminta?" said Cornelia, entering melodramatically. "And what does the Sleeping Beauty want for breakfast?"
"I'm hungry enough to eat sticks and stones and puppy-dog's bones," replied Janet. "But I won't murmur if you have gentler fare."
As Cornelia insisted that dressing should be deferred until after the meal, Janet tripped to the breakfast table in her nightgown, her curly hair hanging down to her shoulders. Cornelia, her figure lapped precariously in a simple dress, which she had made and pinned together at a cost of fifty cents all told, sat down opposite her young guest.
"This is a picnic!" exclaimed Janet. She was filled with glee at the wrapping paper neatly spread out in place of a table cloth, at the cups, saucers and dishes all made of agateware, and at the compressed paper plates for the slices of bread.