“Doesn’t it seem hard to have to pretend to love him?”
“No, he’s so stupid,” said the debonair Mrs. Vondeplosshe as she brought Mary up before the entrance of the Graystone, a cheap apartment house with a marble entrance that extended only a quarter of the way up; from there on ordinary wood and marbleized paper finished the deed. The Vondeplosshes had a rear apartment. Their windows looked upon ash cans and delivery entrances, the front apartments with their bulging bay windows being twenty-five dollars a month more rent. As it was, they were paying forty-five, and very lucky to have the chance to pay it.
Trudy unlocked the door with a flourish. All that Trudy had considered as really essential to the making of a home was a phonograph and a pier glass; the rest was simple––rent a furnished place and wear out someone else’s things. The bandbox of a place with four cell-like rooms was by turns pitiful and amusing to Mary Faithful.
“We are just starting from here,” Trudy reminded her as she watched the gray eyes flicker with humour or narrow with displeasure. “Wait and see––we’ll soon be living neighbour to the O’Valleys. Besides, there is such an advantage in being married. You don’t have to worry for fear you’ll be an–––”
“Old maid,” finished Mary. “Out with it! You can’t frighten me. I hope you and Gay never try changing your minds at the same time, for it would be a squeeze.”
She selected a fragile gilt chair in the tiny living room with its imitation fireplace and row of painted imitation books in the little bookcase. This was in case the tenants had no books of their own––which the Vondeplosshes had not. If they possessed a library they could easily remove the painted board and give it to the janitor for safekeeping. There were imitation Oriental rugs and imitation-leather chairs and imitation-mahogany furniture, plated silver, and imitations of china and of linen were to be found in the small three-cornered dining room, which resembled a penurious wedge of cake, Mary thought as she tried saying something polite. The imitation extended to the bedroom with its wall bed and built-in chiffonier and dresser of gaudy walnut. Trudy had promptly cluttered up the last-mentioned article with smart-looking cretonne and near-ivory toilet articles. There was even a pathetic little wardrobe trunk they had bought for $28.75 in New York, and Trudy had painstakingly soaked off old European hotel labels she had found on one of Gay’s father’s satchels and repasted them on the trunk to give the impression of travel and money.
The kitchen was nothing but a dark hole with a rusty range and nondescript pots and pans. “Being in the kitchen gets me nothing, so why bother about it?” Trudy explained, hardly opening the door. “We have no halls or furnace to care for, and an apartment house sounds so well when you give an address. I wish we could have afforded a front one; it will be hard to have people climbing through the back halls. I have put in a good supply of canned soups and vegetables and powdered puddings, and we can save a lot on our food. We’ll 109 be invited out, too, and when we eat at home I can get a meal in a few minutes and I’ll make Gay wash the dishes. Besides, I have a wonderful recipe for vanishing cream that his sister bought in Paris, and I’m going to have a little business myself, making it to supply to a few select customers as a favour. I’ll sell small jars for a dollar and large ones for three, and I can make liquid face powder, too. Oh, we won’t starve. And if you could wait for the money I know I owe you–––”
“Call it a wedding present,” Mary said, briefly.
“You lamb!”