Walking briskly down the avenue I wondered what was her basic idea this time. Sometimes it’s clothes: “There are some dresses on the bed. Look them over and take what you like. The gray’s rather good, but I think the pink would be more becoming. I can have it done over for you by my woman.” Sometimes it’s a reinvestment of part of my little capital suggested by Harry, a high interest and very safe. Once it was an attempt to marry me off. That was last autumn when I had just got back from Europe, to a man with mines from Idaho. When I grew tearful and reluctant she gave it up and shifted him—for he was too valuable to lose—to a poor relation of Harry’s.
We were at lunch when the basic idea began to rise to the surface, Betty at the head of the table, very tight and upright in purple cloth and chiffon, and little Constance, her eldest born, opposite me. Little Constance is an adorable child with a face like a flower and the manner of a timid mouse. She loves clothes and when I come leans against me looking me over and gently fingering my jewelry. She won’t speak until she has examined it to her satisfaction. At the table her steadfast gaze was diverted from me to a dish of glazed cherries just in front of her.
The entrée was being passed when Betty, helping herself, said:
“Harry’s just met a man from Georgia who is in cotton—not done up in it, his business.” She looked into the dish then accusingly up at the butler: “I said fried, not boiled, and I didn’t want cream sauce.”
The butler muttered explanations.
“Tell her it mustn’t happen again, no more cream sauce for lunch.” She helped herself, murmuring, “Really the most fattening thing one can eat.”
“Why do you eat it?” said little Constance, withdrawing her eyes from the cherries.
“Because I like to. Keep quiet, Constance. Mr. Albertson, that’s his name, is well-off, perfectly presentable and a widower.”
So it was matrimonial again.
“That’s very nice,” I replied meekly.