“It’s time you were waking up,” he bluntly commented. “I should think you would be lonely without Arly.”
“Yes, isn’t it time,” agreed Gerald, studying the matter carefully. “You know, both having plenty of leisure, there’s never been any occasion for us to travel separately before, and, really, I miss her dreadfully.”
“I think I’ll have to get her for you, Gerald,” promised Lucile, removing her hand from in front of her eyes, and smiling at him reassuringly. She could smile beautifully just now. The incredible thing she had thought she detected was positively true, and it made her excitedly happy! Gerald Fosland had been in love with his wife, and had never known it until now!
“If you can work that miracle, and bring Gail back with her, you’ll spread sunshine all over the place,” declared Jim Sargent. “It’s been like a funeral here since she went home. You’d think Gail was the most important section of New York. Everybody’s blue; Allison, Doctor Boyd; everybody who knew her inquires, with long faces, when she’s coming back!”
“What do you propose?” inquired Mrs. Helen Davies, with a degree of interest which intimated that she was quite ready to take any part in the conspiracy.
“I have my little plan,” laughed Lucile. “I’m going to send her an absolutely irresistible reminder of New York!”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MESSAGE FROM NEW YORK
It was good to be home! Gail wondered that she could ever have been content away from the loving shelter of her many, many friends. She had grown world weary in all the false gaiety of New York! She was disillusioned! She was blasé. She was tired of frivolity; and she immediately planned or enthusiastically agreed to take part in a series of gaieties which would have made an average hard-working man anticipate them with an already broken constitution.
The house was full of them, morning, noon and night; young girls, sedate and jolly, and all of them excitedly glad that Gail was among them again; and young men, in all the degrees from social butterflies to plodding business pluggers, equally glad.
Good comfortable home folks these, who were deliciously nice to the stately black-haired Arly, and voted her a tremendous beauty, and stood slightly in awe of her. The half cynical Arly, viewing them critically, found in them one note of interesting novelty; a certain general clean-hearted wholesomeness, and, being a seeker after the unusual, and vastly appreciative, she deliberately cultivated them; flattering the boys, but not so much as to make the other girls hate her. To the girls she made herself even more attractive, because she liked them better. She complimented them individually on the point of perfection for which each girl most prided herself; she told them that they were infinitely more clever than the women of New York, and better looking, in general; for the New York women were mostly clothes and make-up; and, above all, she envied them their truer lives!