Presently the boy with the silver tray entered and approached Margaret. The young man stared openly at her. He began to wonder if she were not younger than he had thought. The girl never raised her downcast eyes; the older woman cast one swift sharp glance at her. The boy murmured so inaudibly that Margaret barely heard, and she rose and followed him as he led the way to the elevator. Miss Wallingford, who was a young Western woman and a rising, if not already arisen literary star, had signified her willingness to receive Mrs. Wilbur Edes in her own private sitting-room. Margaret was successful so far. She had pencilled on her card, “Can you see me on a matter of importance? I am not connected with the Press,” and the young woman who esteemed nearly everything of importance, and was afraid of the Press, had agreed at once to see her. Miss Martha Wallingford was staying in the hotel with an elderly aunt, against whose rule she rebelled in spite of her youth and shyness, which apparently made it impossible for her to rebel against anybody, and the aunt had retired stiffly to her bedroom when her niece said positively that she would see her caller.
“You don't know who she is and I promised your Pa when we started that I wouldn't let you get acquainted with folks unless I knew all about them,” the aunt had said and the niece, the risen star, had set her mouth hard. “We haven't seen a soul except those newspaper men, and I know everyone of them is married, and those two newspaper women who told about my sleeves being out of date,” said Martha Wallingford, “and this Mrs. Edes may be real nice. I'm going to see her anyhow. We came so late in the season that I believe everybody in New York worth seeing has gone away and this lady has come in from the country and it may lead to my having a good time after all. I haven't had much of a time so far, and you know it, Aunt Susan.”
“How you talk, Martha Wallingford! Haven't you been to the theatre every night and Coney Island, and the Metropolitan and—everything there is to see?”
“There isn't much to see in New York anyway except the people,” returned the niece. “People are all I care for anyway, and I don't call the people I have seen worth counting. They only came to make a little money out of me and my sleeves. I am glad I got this dress at McCreery's. These sleeves are all right. If this Mrs. Edes should be a newspaper woman, she can't make fun of these sleeves anyway.”
“You paid an awful price for that dress,” said her aunt.
“I don't care. I got such a lot for my book that I might as well have a little out of it, and you know as well as I do, Aunt Susan, that South Mordan, Illinois, may be a very nice place, but it does not keep up with New York fashions. I really did not have a decent thing to wear when I started. Miss Slocumb did as well as she knew how, but her ideas are about three years behind New York. I didn't know myself, how should I? And you didn't, and as for Pa, he would think everything I had on was stylish if it dated back to the ark. You ought to have bought that mauve silk for yourself. You have money enough; you know you have, Aunt Susan.”
“I have money enough, thanks to my dear husband's saving all his life, but it is not going to be squandered on dress by me, now he is dead and gone.”
“I would have bought the dress for you myself, then,” said the niece.
“No, thank you,” returned the aunt with asperity. “I have never been in the habit of being beholden to you for my clothes and I am not going to begin now. I didn't want that dress anyway. I always hated purple.”
“It wasn't purple, it was mauve.”