Beatrice felt chirked up upon hearing this. She told herself that Trudy was an inveterate gossip and this queer young person must be thinking aloud about revolutions in Russia or something like that; anything else was too absurd. So she repeated her invitation to come to see the gardens with their jewel-like pools and riotous masses of colour, and went on her way to select a most gorgeous frame for a most gorgeous portrait of herself.
Steve expressed his thanks for the surprise picture quite properly, and after giving it a few days of prominence on his desk he relegated it to a shelf beside a weather-beaten map of the Great Lakes which had always been in the office.
And here another phase of the Gorgeous Girl’s effort to do something and exercise her faculties occurred. Though she regarded Trudy’s gossip as absurd she did not forget it. No woman would. It lay in waiting until the right moment.
Her father’s illness and Steve’s worried look as he came home each night caused Beatrice to cast about for something noble and remarkable to do. The conclusion she reached was that it was her duty to retrench; she was not going to have floor-scrubbing duchesses corner all the economy feats. She would 260 make it the mode to live simply, even be penurious in some ways––now that she had the Villa Rosa and a season’s budget of frocks. She began looking over the monthly bills in deadly earnest. The result was a blinding headache which prevented her going in to see her father. She retired to her room in cream lace with endless strings of coral, and left word for Steve to drop in on his way to his own room.
“Deary, I’ve been too extravagant,” she began faintly as he opened the door. She reached out her hand to find his.
He brought a chair over beside the chaise-longue and sat down obediently, holding the small, fragrant fingers in his own. “I’d be mighty glad if you felt you could live more simply.”
“You duck! Just what I’m about to do. I’m going to be the loveliest Queen Calico you ever did see––I’ve no doubt but what I’ll be making you a beefsteak pudding before long.”
Steve smiled. “Who will take this castle of gloom from under us?”
“Oh! We may as well stay here––I don’t mean that sort of retrenching––I mean in other ways. I’m not going to give expensive bridge parties or keep three motors and a saddle horse––I can’t ride any more, anyway––and I’m not going to have a professional reader for papa. Aunt Belle, you, and I can manage that––that will take fifteen dollars a week from the expenses. Besides, I am going to have three-course dinners from now on––no game, fish, or extra sweet. That will make a difference––in time. I shall not buy the new dinner set I had halfway ordered––it was wonderful, of course, but I have no right to use money for nonsense. Papa can give 261 it to me for my birthday if he wants to. Gifts don’t count, do they, Stevuns?
“Then there is the servant question. Now cook is seventy-five dollars a month; the three maids are fifty each, besides all they steal and waste; the laundress and her helper, the chauffeur and all the garden men; the food, light, heat––to say nothing of extra expenses; my parties and trips and the enormous bills for taxes and upkeep that papa pays––I’m afraid to say how much it comes to each month. But it is going to stop! Then my clothes––I’m just ashamed to think––while you, poor dear, exist on nothing–––Oh, thank you, Elsie.” A maid had brought in a supper tray.