Returning home for a canned luncheon she discovered Gaylord humming a love song and strumming on his ukulele.
“I say, old dear,” he began, “I have had the greatest luck! I call it nothing short of a fairy tale.” He pointed at his neckscarf. Coming near, Trudy bent over and gave way to a shrill scream. A handsome diamond pin reposed in the old-rose silk.
“Where––where did you get it?” she managed to articulate.
“Beatrice really––the result of the raffle for the children’s charity. You remember we took tickets? She donated this scarfpin, and this morning Jill Briggs came in and presented the trophy. My number was the winning one: 56.”
“She made you win it. You know she did, you toadying little abomination! You fairly lick her boots––and she has to tip you occasionally. And 248 you sit there wearing that pin and never offering to have it set in a pin for me. You dare to keep it––you dare?” She lost her self-control.
Gay sprang up in alarm, the ukulele being the only weapon handy, holding her off at arm’s length. “How low!” he chattered. “How d-disgustingly low–––”
“Is it? I’ll show you––I’ll show you whether or not you can wear diamond stickpins while I have to endure a wedding ring like a washwoman’s!”
Before Gay knew what was happening Trudy had left the house. A half hour later a suave clerk’s voice from the jewellery store was asking him to step down at once, his wife had requested it, she had decided on a ring for herself but wished his seal of approval––so did the store––and a small deposit––would he be able to be with them shortly?
He would, struggling with a man-size rage. After all, the little five-eighths-carat stone he had so proudly adorned his bosom with would be dearly paid for in the end. That was what came of marrying beneath him, he reproached himself as he locked up the apartment and went down to the store. To make a scene in a fifty-cent café was not worth the effort, Trudy had once proclaimed, but to run the gauntlet of real rough-house emotion in a jewellery store frequented by his clientele would be social suicide. The only thing was to make Beatrice pay a larger commission on the things for her new tea house so that he could pay for this red-haired vixen’s ring. But this would not in the least dim the red-haired vixen’s triumph, which was the issue at stake. From that moment he began really to hate Trudy.
To her amazement he greeted her in honeyed tones, approved the ring, and suggested that the wedding 249 ring be turned in for old gold and replaced by a modern creation and so on, produced a deposit, and walked out with Trudy, who wore the new symbol of triumph on her finger, proposing that they lunch downtown. He was determined to carry it through without a moment’s faltering.