Alice Mendon paid no attention to it, but her companion, Daisy Shaw, otherwise Mrs. Sumner Shaw, who was of the tense, nervous type, had remarked it uneasily when they first started. She had rapped vigorously upon the front window, and a misty, rather beautiful blue eye had rolled interrogatively over Jim's shoulder.
“Your robe is dragging,” shrieked in shrill staccato Daisy Shaw; and there had been a dull nod of the head, a feeble pull at the dragging robe, then it had dragged again.
“Oh, don't mind, dear,” said Alice Mendon. “It is his own lookout if he loses the robe.”
“It isn't that,” responded Daisy querulously. “It isn't that. I don't care, since he is so careless, if he does lose it, but I must say that I don't think it is safe. Suppose it got caught in the wheel, and I know this horse stumbles.”
“Don't worry, dear,” said Alice Mendon. “Fitzgerald's robe always drags, and nothing ever happens.”
Alice Mendon was a young woman, not a young girl (she had left young girlhood behind several years since) and she was distinctly beautiful after a fashion that is not easily affected by the passing years. She had had rather an eventful life, but not an event, pleasant or otherwise, had left its mark upon the smooth oval of her face. There was not a side nor retrospective glance to disturb the serenity of her large blue eyes. Although her eyes were blue, her hair was almost chestnut black, except in certain lights, when it gave out gleams as of dark gold. Her features were full, her figure large, but not too large. She wore a dark red tailored gown; and sumptuous sable furs shaded with dusky softness and shot, in the sun, with prismatic gleams, set off her handsome, not exactly smiling, but serenely beaming face. Two great black ostrich plumes and one red one curled down toward the soft spikes of the fur. Between, the two great blue eyes, the soft oval of the cheeks, and the pleasant red fullness of the lips appeared.
Poor Daisy Shaw, who was poor in two senses, strength of nerve and money, looked blue and cold in her little black suit, and her pale blue liberty scarf was horribly inadequate and unbecoming. Daisy was really painful to see as she gazed out apprehensively at the dragging robe, and the glistening slant over which they were moving. Alice regarded her not so much with pity as with a calm, sheltering sense of superiority and strength. She pulled the inner robe of the coupé up and tucked it firmly around Daisy's thin knees.
“You look half frozen,” said Alice.
“I don't mind being frozen, but I do mind being scared,” replied Daisy sharply. She removed the robe with a twitch.
“If that old horse stumbles and goes down and kicks, I want to be able to get out without being all tangled up in a robe and dragged,” said she.