“Do you live here, too?” asked Billie.
“Yes. Mother loves this old house and I do, too. It’s so much more private and quiet than a hotel. We have been coming here for years.”
“And it was you who was singing this morning?” demanded Nancy.
“Very likely. I am always singing.”
So it turned out that Maria Ruggles Cortinas, who had sung “Aïda” before a brilliant audience the night before, was the near neighbor of the Motor Maids, and was entertaining them at dinner that very evening.
“Shall we sit down and wait here until the motor comes?” suggested Maria. “It’s not quite time yet. I told them to call at half past seven. People dine very late here.”
The girls drew their chairs in a circle about the singer and watched her as if she were a curiosity. Certainly she was not their idea of what an actress was like. She was tall and quite slender through the hips, but with a singer’s chest splendidly developed and a throat full and white like a column. Her black hair was arranged as plainly as possible in a low roll on the back of her neck. Her eyes were large and dark, her nose straight and well shaped; her mouth rather large, with a generous curve to the lips; her chin full and rounded. But it was not only her features that made Maria beautiful. There was something else, a certain graciousness and charm of manner, a lovely smile which radiated her face,—these things alone would have made almost any one beautiful. So Billie was thinking, when the motor car was announced.
Presently they found themselves rolling through the streets of London in a big touring car, in the late twilight which lingers in England long after the sun has set. They became part of a stream of carriages and motor cars filled with people in evening clothes. The whole world of London seemed to have dressed itself up for dinner. At last they drew up in front of a great hotel. A lackey opened the door of the car and they followed Maria into a splendid restaurant where all the women were dressed in décolleté gowns and the men in evening clothes.
It was a brilliant scene to the young girls, the flowers and music and the soft-footed waiters gliding about. Miss Campbell and Maria exchanged smiling glances over their serious faces. An obsequious head waiter, who evidently knew Maria well, bowed them to a table as if they had been six royal princesses. Not one of our Motor Maids was free from a slight feeling of stage fright. But in a few moments they were eating their soup and talking as gayly and naturally as they ever had around Mrs. Ruggles’ own table in the Sailor’s Inn near West Haven.
“Are there any Lords and Ladies here, Maria?” asked Nancy.