So far the explosion editors of the various papers had seen nothing to particularly commend in the work of their fevered emissaries, and even the heavy-jawed genius who gathered, from silent cogitation over four cigarettes and a quart of beer, the purple fiction that the explosion had cracked the walls of every subway in the city, which were likely to cave in at any time, only received the compliment of a grateful grunt.
Little Miss Piper, of the Morning Planet, however, was possessed of a better thought. She was a somewhat withered and puckered little woman, who had sense enough to dress so as to excite nothing but pity, and she quietly slipped on her ugly little bonnet with the funny ribbon bow in the back, and hurried out to the magnificent residence of Mrs. Phyllis Worthmore, who loathed publicity and had photographs taken once a month for the purpose.
Mrs. Phyllis Worthmore was invariably sweet and gracious to working women, for, after all, they were her sisters, you know; and she excused herself from a caller in order to meet little Miss Piper in Mr. Worthmore’s deserted den. Mrs. Worthmore was highly agitated over the news of the explosion, and she required no particular urging to jabber on and on about her dear friends who had been in that terrible catastrophe, and she was ultra enthusiastic when the name of Gail was mentioned.
“Oh, Miss Sargent is quite the sensation of the season!” she gushed. “Her people are fairly well to do, I believe; but her beauty makes up for the absence of any extravagant fortune. It is commonly conceded that none of the eligibles in our set are available until Miss Sargent has made her choice. Positively all of them are at her feet!” and, at puckered little Miss Piper’s later request, she lightly enumerated a few of the eligibles in their set; after which Miss Piper took to furtive glances at her watch, and to feeling the excessively modulated voice of Mrs. Phyllis Worthmore pounding into her brain like the clatter of a watchman’s rattle.
The result of that light-hearted and light-headed interview, in which Mrs. Phyllis Worthmore, by special request, was not quoted, suddenly sprang on the startled eyes of Gail, when she leaped through the Sunday Morning Planet at eight o’clock next morning. An entire page, embellished in the centre with a beautifully printed photograph, was devoted to the sensational beauty from the middle-west! Around her were grouped nine smaller photographs; Allison, Dick Rodley, Willis Cunningham, Houston Van Ploon, the Reverend Smith Boyd, a callow youth who had danced with her three times, a Count who had said “How do you do?” and sailed for Europe, and two men whom she had never met. All these crack eligibles were classified under the general head of “Slaves to Her Witching Smile,” and a big, boxed-in list was given, in extremely black-faced type, stating, in dollars and cents, the exact value in the matrimonial market of each slave; and the lively genius who had put together this symposium, by a toweringly happy thought conceived in the very height of the rush hours, totalled the whole, and gave it as the commercial worth of Gail’s beauty and charm. It ran into thirteen figures, including the dollar mark and the two ciphers for cents.
Nor was this all! A lightning fingered artist had depicted, at the bottom of the group, outline sketches of the nine suitors, on their knees in a row, holding up, towards the beautiful picture of Gail in the centre, their hearts in one hand and their bags of money in the other; and, even though overworked, the artist had not forgotten to put the Cross of the Legion of Honour on the breast of the Count, nor the sparse Van Dyke on Willis Cunningham. Flowing with further facile fancy, he had embellished the upper right-hand corner of the group with an extremely lithe and slim-waisted drawing of the streaming haired Gail, as a siren fishing in the sea; and the sea, represented by many frothing curls, was, in the upper left-hand corner, densely populated by foolish little gold fish, rushing eagerly to the dangling bait of the siren. Any one of the parties mentioned could have sued the Planet for libel; but they would not, and they would have been made highly ridiculous if they had, which was the joke of the whole matter, and left the metropolitan press more and more highly uncurbed; which was a right sturdily to be maintained in a land of free speech!
When Lucile Teasdale and Arly Fosland arrived at Jim Sargent’s house at ten o’clock, and had been let in at the side entrance, they found Gail dabbing her eyes with a powder puff, taken from a little black travelling bag which stood open at her side. Arlene was a second later than Lucile in clasping Gail in her arms, because she had to lift a travelling veil. The two girls expressed their condolence and their horror of the outrage, and volubly poured out more sympathy; then they sat down and shrieked with laughter.
“It’s too awful for words!” gasped Lucile. “But it is funny, too.”
Gail’s chin quivered.
“There should be a law against such things,” she broken-heartedly returned, in a voice which wavered and halted with the echoes of recent sobs.