Janice shrank from contemplating the awkwardness bound to arise out of her meeting with the civil engineer’s sister. Frank might be a very “civil” engineer indeed; but Annette, as Janice well knew, was woefully lacking in that element of her brother’s character. When Janice and Annette met, the latter could not fail to recognize the former as the person who had driven the automobile when Judge Slater’s cob was frightened on the Middletown Lower Road. And then what?
“There will be an explosion,” sighed Janice. “I would give a good deal if Auntie and I had not gone to Middletown that day.”
Meanwhile Annette was not idle. She made her presence felt in Polktown from the beginning. Her first parade up the hill to Massey’s drug store for the purchasing of a new toothbrush and some face powder was conducted in a manner to strike Polktown—even the feminine section—with awe. A musical comedy queen, right off the stage, could have been no more gaily appareled than Annette Bowman. Moreover, her eyebrows were heavily penciled, her lips rouged, her cheeks tinted and her nose powdered so thickly that the contrast between cheeks and nose was startling.
She wore a dress of pale green, the over-gown of some sheer material, while the actual frock itself clung as closely to her slight figure as a glove, and was slit up in front half way to her knees. She wore dancing slippers with high heels, and as she walked one could glimpse embroidered silk stockings.
Walky Dexter, who saw her as he was driving down to the boat dock, afterward vowed that Josephus was more startled by the sight than he had been by the apparition of Janice Day’s new car.
“I snum!” exclaimed Walky; “she looked like one o’ them green hoppergrasses ye see in a ryefield—a standin’ on its hind laigs an’ teeterin’ along like our old Ponto when he tries ter beg for a dog-biscuit. Nor I never did see nothin’ jest like that parasol before, neither—all lace and do-funnies. Wouldn’t keep the sun off’n a blind worm in a mole-tunnel, that wouldn’t! Jest as soon hev a colander on a stick.”
Whereas Walky was critical and some of the other male observers inclined to laugh at Miss Annette Bowman, the female portion of Polktown’s inhabitants was soon divided into two camps—one openly admiring the stylish young lady, the other speaking harshly of her; but both in their hearts wishing they could view her wonderful costumes more closely.
In the afternoon Annette went for another stroll, arrayed from head to toe in an entirely different creation of a fashionable New York costumer. Behind the cover of the window blinds the ladies of High Street took note of Miss Bowman’s fashion-plate figure.
Venturing into Massey’s once more, the proprietor, on the strength of having served her in the morning, introduced a couple of the older girls to the new arrival in Polktown. Annette was very gracious—nobody could be more so when she cared to make a good impression—and she quite charmed Elvira Snow and Mabel Woods. All three strolled up the shadiest side of High Street. Elvira and Mabel were the sort of girls who read romantic novels, consider a boy’s attentions a subject to be whispered about, and who preen before a mirror when they make ready for an appearance in public. Elvira desired her friends to call her “’Vira,” while Mabel Woods had long written her name “Maybelle.”
They were envied by the other girls they met that day because they were first to become acquainted with the new guest at the Lake View Inn. There was to be a small party at Major Price’s house that evening, and when, in the peregrinations of the trio, they came past the Major’s fine old mansion and spacious lawn, Maggie Price was introduced to the city girl. No matter what was put on poor Maggie, she always would look dowdy; and yet in her soul the Major’s daughter worshipped at the shrine of Fashion.