But I can't go upon the stage. How could I have thought of it? I mustn't subject myself to the late hours, the grease paint, the bad air! Of what use would be a mint of money, if I lost my beauty?
I steadied my nerves with a tiny glass of Curaçoa, and looked again. The face in the mirror was beautiful, beautiful! There is no other like it! And gazing upon radiant Her, I might have recovered myself but for the third untoward event of the day.
It came in the shape of Bellmer.
Perhaps I ought not to have seen him alone, but it is hard for one who has lived in the free atmosphere of the prairie, and has been a bachelor girl in New York with Kitty Reid to think about caution. Besides, it was such a blessed relief to see his full-moon face rise above the darkness of my troubles! I greeted him with my sweetest smile, and did my very best to make myself agreeable.
"You've been out of town, haven't you?" I asked when the talk began to flag, as it soon does with Hughy.
"Aw, yes," he said; "pickin' up a record or two, with my 'mobe;' y' ought to see it; it's a beauty, gasolene, you know. Awful nuisance, punctures, though. Cost me thirteen dollars to repair one; vulcanize the tire, y'see. Tires weigh thirty pounds each; awful lot, ain't it? Stripped one right off, though, trying to turn in the mud; fastened on with half-inch spikes, too. Can't I persuade you to—aw—take a spin some day? Where's Mrs. Whitney?"
"Gone to the country; she—she's ill."
"Awful tabby, wa'n't she?"
"Oh, no; I like her very much, but she was in a hurry to leave town."
"So Aunt Terry said. Awf'ly down on you, Aunt Terry is," he drawled with even more than his usual tactlessness, "but I stand up for you, I assuah you, Miss Winship. I tell her you're awf'ly sensible an' jolly—lettin' a fellow come like this, now, and talk to you's jolly, ain't it? An' you will try my mobe? Awf'ly jolly 'twould be to take a spin."