“Mollie,” she said, addressing the young girl, “I think it is peculiarly appropriate for my butterfly girl to be introduced to my piazza. It is made to look like a Japanese teahouse,” she explained to Miss Sallie.
The sides of Mrs. Cartwright’s veranda were of heavy Japanese paper stretched on bamboo poles which opened and closed at will. The paper had been painted by a famous Japanese artist to represent springtime in Japan. There were whole rows of cherry trees in full blossom, with little Japanese children playing beneath them. Opposite this scene was another painting—a marshy lake, surrounded by queer Japanese birds.
The veranda was lighted by a hundred tiny shaded lamps. Japanese matting covered the floor, while the tea tables were set with tea services bought in old Japan. The girls had never seen anything so lovely.
“You are officially invited to have tea with me here, any or every afternoon you are in Newport. Now I will run and get Mr. Cartwright,” added their hostess, “and we will go over to the Casino.”
Outside, the Casino looked like a rambling, old Dutch mansion, with peaked gables and overhanging eaves.
“We’ve a Dutch house, English lawns and a French chef,” Mr. Cartwright laughingly explained to Miss Sallie as they entered.
“And we’ve dozens of tennis courts,” added Mrs. Cartwright. “We are working dreadfully hard, now, for the tournament that is to take place in a few weeks. It is really the social event of the whole year at Newport. Is there a star player among you girls? Why not enter the tournament and compete for the championship? We are to have a special match game, this year, played by the young people. Let us keep these tennis courts busy for a while. You’ll come over, too, Miss Stuart, won’t you, and play bridge while we work. Or you’ll work at bridge, while we play tennis. Perhaps you think that is the way I should have put it.”
CHAPTER XII—A WEEK LATER
“Barbara, I wouldn’t play tennis with Gladys and Harry Townsend, if I were you,” said Mollie to her sister, one morning a week later. “They were horrid to you yesterday. Didn’t you notice, when you called to Hugh and Ruth that their last ball had gone over the line, Gladys just shrugged her shoulders, and gave a sneery kind of smile to that Townsend fellow, and he lifted his eyebrows! Is your score the best, or Ruth’s? I know you’re both ahead of Gladys and Grace. I am sure Gladys doesn’t play a bit better than I do; so she needn’t have been so high and mighty.”
Mollie shrugged her dainty shoulders. “You see, she told me, the first day she arrived, that, of course, I didn’t play in the class with the others, so you had just the right eight for the two courts—four girls and four men.”