It was over their hurried breakfast that the discussion took place, with Trudy, quite a fright in a tousled boudoir cap and négligé, scuttling about the dining room with the breakfast tray and planning to send out bills, reorder some draperies, and call up her friends until one of them should offer to take her to a fashionable morning musical in the near future. After which she would go down town and make good at her star act––window wishing.
“You make me so tired I wonder why I don’t clear out,” she retorted. “You think I’m afraid to buy a diamond ring and charge it to you? Watch me!”
“Just try it and see what will happen.”
“I will, kind sir.” Dropping him a curtsy, Trudy repaired to do the dishes and swiggle an oil mop about the floor briefly. Then she burnt some scented powder and pulled down the window shades. This constituted getting the establishment in order, the slavey having gone tootling off on a party some days before.
Trudy did not refer to the breakfast-table discussion before she left the apartment. She was dangerously sweet, and even went into Gay’s room, where he was donning his gray-velvet studio blouse for the morning’s labours. She told him she was quite sure of securing a fairly good-sized order for some window shades. Gay did not think it necessary to answer. He did not glance at her; instead he yawned and sprinkled toilet water profusely on his pink lawn handkerchief.
After a moment’s hesitation she went her own way. When she had lingered about the jewellery counter like a wilful yet not quite wicked child––peering down at the wonderful, enchanting things which mocked her empty purse; recalling Gay’s first flush of romance and devotion; her own clever, untiring methods of pushing him into the front ranks; Mary and Mary’s little secret, so unsafe in Trudy’s keeping; Beatrice, who did not know quite how many rings she possessed; the whole maddening and really uninteresting tangle––she wondered if she could force Gay to buy her a ring. Should she boldly order such-and-such a stone and pick out a setting and present him with the bill? Why she hesitated she did not know; she was like all her wilful sisters who gaze and sigh, pity themselves, and then steal away to Oriental shops to appease the hunger by a near-silver ring with a bulging near-precious stone set in Hoboken style.
This Trudy did not do. For some reason or other she let her errands go by and took a car to Mary’s office, stopping at the corner to buy her a flower. Instinctively one connected Mary and flowers as one associated Beatrice and jewellery.
She found Mary had gone into the old office building to see about something and that Steve, who was always as restless as a polar bear when forced into a tête-à-tête with Trudy, was alone in his office. He was obliged to ask her to sit down and wait for Mary. Trudy peered curiously about the rooms. She had never lost that rare sense of triumph––returning as a fine lady to the very place where she had once worked for fifteen per. Smiling graciously at former associates she imagined that she created as much excitement as Beatrice’s visits themselves.