No group of young people could resist such careful work as that, especially when performed by a young woman so adroit and so attractive, and so well gowned; so they lost their awkwardness with her, which removed any sense of discomfort Gail might have felt, which was the aim to be accomplished. In those first few days Gail was the happiest of all creatures, in spite of the fact that the local papers had carried a politer echo of that despicable slave story. At nights, however, beginning with the second one, when the girls had retired to the mutual runway of their adjoining suites, the conversation would turn something like this.
“Let’s see, this is the seventeenth, isn’t it?” thus Arly.
“Yes; Tuesday,” concentratedly selecting a chocolate, the box of which bore a New York name.
“Mrs. Matson’s ice skating ball is to-night.” A sidelong glance at the busy Gail.
“Um-hum.” A chocolate between her white teeth.
“She always has such original affairs.”
“Doesn’t she!” Gail draws her sandalled feet up under her and stretches down her pink negligee, so that she looks like a stiff little statue in tinted ivory.
“And such interesting people. That new artist is certain to be there. What’s his name? Oh yes, Vloddow. I could adore him.”
“You’re a mere verbal adorer,” laughs Gail, studying anxiously over the problem of whether she wants another piece of chocolate or not. Allison had sent such good ones. “Vloddow eats garlic.”
“That’s why I adore him, from a distance. Of course all the nice regular fellows will be there; Dick Rodley, and Ted, and Houston, and — Oh, oh! I forgot to write Gerald,” and with a swift passing kiss somewhere between Gail’s ear and her chin, she hurries into her own dressing-room, with a backward glance to make sure that Gail is staring, with softened brown eyes, down into her chocolate box, and seeing there amid the brown confections, the laughing, swirling skaters in Mrs. Matson’s glistening ballroom. Dick, and Ted, and Houston, and Willis, Lucile and Marion, Flo Reynolds, and the gay little Mrs. Babbitt, and a host of others. There were some who would not be at that ball; Allison, and the Reverend Smith Boyd, and—Arlene has plenty of time to write her formally dutiful letter without disturbance.