“For heaven’s sake, tell Carter to put down that parasol!”
The word was then passed to Ethel, who, in the same excited tone, passed it to the man seated next to Carter.
“Miss Ayr of Virginia is requested to lower her parasol,” he said, with more amiability in his manners than her two cousins had used.
Carter, who had heard the behest, when it had originated with her eldest cousin, did not at once succumb, but said, from under the flaunting glory of the proscribed article:
“Why?”
“Of course, coming from Virginia she didn’t know,” she heard her cousin saying in a tone of contemptuous extenuation, which she hotly resented.
No one had answered her question, however, and so turning to the woman who sat nearest to her—it happened to be Mrs. Emory—she said:
“Why shouldn’t I raise my parasol, if the sun is out?”
“It isn’t done,” was the answer, given curtly and coldly, and Mrs. Emory returned at once to her talk with her neighbor.
Carter, of course, furled her offending sun-shade, feeling snubbed and sore. It would have been childish and rude to persist, but she was not only hurt, but puzzled. Being from the rural regions she had not as her cousin suggested, any knowledge of the fact that it was not considered smart to raise a parasol on a coach. This sacred tenet was so strictly adhered to, however, that although it was a warm and dusty autumn day, the ladies endured the heat unmurmuringly, staring with haughty superiority at the coaches on which the people were pleasantly shaded by their parasols.