“Some one,” she confided, “and it doesn’t matter in the least who, since he has gone from my life—I assure you I have absolutely put every thought of him away—intimated that I could do nothing but be a butterfly. He was brutal, absolutely brutal!
“And I—perfectly enraged—said I could work, and I would show him that I could. And that very night—Vi, are you sitting on my ostrich feather fan?—oh, all right, I thought I saw something pink there; no, I don’t mind the scarf—”
“Go on, dear,” said Viola, after her exploration and a wiggle that settled her again.
“That very night,” Leslie continued, “I telephoned Aunt Sheila, who happened to be in town and at the Plaza, and I told her I intended to come here and study with Signor Paggi. She was just as mean as she could be. ‘Very well, Leslie,’ she said in that crisp way in which she often speaks. ‘But he won’t keep pupils who don’t work—’ . . . ‘He will keep me,’ I answered, and my voice shook. . . . I was fearfully overwrought—my heart had already been trampled upon—”
I thought that sounded silly, but Viola didn’t, because she said, “My dear!” rather breathed it out as if some one had taken her lungs and squeezed them just as she began to speak.
Leslie looked up at the ceiling and swallowed hard, in a way she considered tragic, and it was, but it also made me think of Roberta’s canary when it drinks. Then she rubbed her brow, laughed mirthlessly, and ended with, “and here I am!”
“The bath tub’s the worst,” said Viola, which sort of took the cream off of Leslie’s tragic moment, and I could see that Leslie didn’t like it, for she frowned.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Leslie after a small lull, “whether to hunt some other place, or stand this—”
“Our trunks are all here,” Viola stated, “and it would be hard to move—” (she had unpacked, and I found later she hated effort) “I wondered whether we couldn’t get a few little extra things—curtains, and cushions and so on? And the food we could supplement. I can make fudge and chicken king.”
“I am certain I can make tea,” said Leslie, “it’s only a matter of the proper pot and a spirit lamp and some water, and then throwing the stuff in—I’ve seen it done dozens of times.”