Beatrice, who was busy inspecting some newly arrived lingerie, did not glance up as she answered: “Don’t be silly. You know it’s a relief. You can sit back and rest from now on––until I’m divorced,” she added with a smile.
“How can you even say such a thing?”
Beatrice tossed the filmy creamy silk somethings or other away and delivered herself of her mind. “Alice Twill was divorced before she married this specimen; so was Coralie Minter; and Harold Atwater; and both the Deralto girls were divorced, and their mother, too. And Jill Briggs is considering it, and I’m sure I don’t blame her. Everyone seems to think a divorce quite the proper caper when things grow dull. You may as well have all the fun you can. Steve wants me to have everything I fancy, and I’m sure he’d never deny me a divorce.”
“You are marrying a splendid, self-made young man who adores you and who is making money every day in the week. No girl is to be more envied––you have had a wonderful ten years of being a ‘Gorgeous Girl,’ as your dear papa calls it, and at twenty-six you are to become the bride of a wonderful man––neither too early nor too late an age. I cannot really grieve––when I realize how happy you are going to be, and yet–––”
“Don’t work so hard, aunty,” Bea said, easily. “Of course Steve’s a wonderful old dear and all that––I wish I had asked him for the moon. I do believe he’d have gotten an option on it.” She laughed and reached over to a bonbon dish to rummage for a favourite flavour. She selected a fat, deadly looking affair, only to bite into it and discover her mistake. She tossed it on the floor so that Monster could creep out of her silk-lined basket and devour the remains.
“If you call natural feelings of a mother and an aunt ‘working hard’ I am at a loss–––” her aunt began with attempted indignation.
“Oh, I don’t call anything anything; I’m dead and almost buried.” She looked at her small self in the pier glass. “Think of all I have to go through with before it is over and we are on our way west. Here it is half-past twelve and I’ve not eaten breakfast really. I’m so tired of presents and bored with clothes that I cannot acknowledge another thing or decide anything. I think weddings are a frightful ordeal. Did you know the women on my war-relief committee presented me with a silver jewel box? Lovely of them, wasn’t it? But I deserve it––after slaving all last winter. My bronchitis was just because I sold tags for them during that rainy weather.”
“No, I haven’t seen it. But I am glad you decided on a church wedding––there is such a difference between a wedding and just a marriage.”