“You have a wonderful imagination, dear,” Miss Moore remarked, admiringly.
“Well, I don’t know how I’d ever get through my articles if I didn’t. The last time I went over to New York I called on all the leading women tailors and dressmakers, and I couldn’t get a thing out of them, and the next day I had to write five thousand words on the new Spring fashions.”
Miss Moore rolled her eyes. “What in the world did you do?” she said, with an affectation of voice and manner that suggested years of practice.
Miss Wing smiled. “Well,” she replied, after a moment, “I had a perfectly beautiful time writing that article. I made up everything in it. I prophesied the most extraordinary changes in women’s clothes. And do you know, some of them have really come about since! I suppose some of the other papers copied my stuff. And then, I actually invented some new materials!”
The pupils of Miss Moore’s eyes expanded in admiration. “I wish I had your nerve!” she said, earnestly.
Under the warmth of flattery Miss Wing began to brighten. “And what do you suppose happened?” she said, exultantly. “The paper had a whole raft of letters asking where those materials could be bought. One woman out in Ohio declared she’d been in New York, and she’d hunted everywhere to get the embossed silk that I’d described.”
Farley smiled grimly. “That woman’s going to get along in the world,” he muttered to Mrs. McShane. “In five years she’ll be a notorious lobbyist, with a hundred thousand dollars in the bank.”
By this time Miss Wing had tired of the isolation of the conservatory. The interest of the evening was plainly centred in the drawing-room. “Come, dear,” she said, drawing her arm around Miss Moore’s, “let’s walk about and get a look at the people.”
As the two women started to mount the steps they were met by Franklin West, whose smiling face suddenly lost and resumed its radiance as his eyes caught sight of them. The effect was not unlike that of the winking of an electric light. The women either did not observe, or they deliberately ignored the effect upon him of the encounter, or possibly they misinterpreted it. At any rate, it made no appreciable diminution of their own expression of pleasure.
Miss Wing extended her hand. “Why, how do you do, Mr. West?” Miss Moore only smiled; in the presence of her companion she seemed instinctively to reduce herself to a subordinate position.