This pleasant afternoon of early spring they were all out to do their job with grace and skill. They had drawn a cordon round Clanborough House and its environs. As Mame came up she observed that privileged beings armed with cameras were in the middle of the road. This caused her some slight regret that she had not driven up to the awning in style and had the door opened by a policeman. It was reasonably certain that she would have been the first guest to arrive and would therefore have been a good subject for the camera. With a bit of luck the new hat and fox might have found their way into the New York papers.
It seemed a pity to have missed that chance. Life, however, still held one or two agreeable things. One of these was the fact that the first policeman to challenge her progress, when in order to dissociate herself from the crowd she stepped off the sidewalk and took to the roadway, was no less than that identical young cop whom she had met the previous evening in Hyde Park.
Life is full of gay surprises. For Mame at this moment it was a delicious affair. To be stopped by that veritable baby in the broad light of day, to be accosted before the multitude, and to be politely requested not to walk in the road was about as good a thing as could have happened to her. The sight of the dour but well-cut features, of the sandy hair and the unsmiling face filled her at once with the joy that warriors feel.
Now that the big moment had come she was no longer cuckoo. Like any other American citizeness she was reacting just naturally to the occasion. The sight of that policeman, the sound of his voice, removed the last trace of stage fright.
“Ye can’t walk along hair, miss.”
“Why not?”
“Unless ye’ve a ticket for the r-r-reception.”
Torn between an ambition to behave like a peeress and a powerful desire to put one over on the constable, the wearer of the new hat and fox opened her vanity bag and haughtily produced her invite.
The young bobby, at the sight of that magic bit of pasteboard and with the eyes of many superior officers upon him, drew himself to his full height and saluted the new hat and fox as only a Scots policeman could have done.
Coolly and with fixity of mind, Mame went through some warlike evolutions with her tortoise-shell folders. A whole series of evolutions. She seemed to detect all about her a sudden joyous clicking of cameras. Her picture was going to be in the New York papers after all.