Trudy fell on her neck and was in the throes of explaining how grateful she was and how she had an evening dress modelled after one of Gay’s sister’s, which cost seven hundred dollars before the war, when Gay appeared––very debonair and optimistic in his checked suit, velours hat, and toothpick-toed tan shoes, and his pale little eyes were quite animated as he kissed Trudy and dutifully shook hands with Mary, explaining that the Hunters of Arcadia had just offered him a clerical position at the club, ordering supplies and making out bills and so on––because he was married, very likely. It would pay forty a month and his lunches.
“And only take up your mornings! You can slip extra sandwiches in your pockets for me, deary. I’ll give you a rubber-pocketed vest for a Christmas present,” Trudy exclaimed. “Oh, say everything in front of Mary––she knows what we really are!”
At which Mary fled, with the general after impression of pale, wicked eyes and a checked suit and a dashing, red-haired young matron with a can opener always on hand, and the fact that the Vondeplosshes 110 were going to lay siege to the O’Valleys as soon as possible.
Mary decided that it was a great privilege to be a profane lady concealing a heartache compared to other alternatives. At least heartaches were quite real.
CHAPTER VII
It was almost Christmas week before the realization of Trudy’s ambition to have Beatrice call upon her as the wife of Gaylord Vondeplosshe instead of an unimportant employee of her own husband. Trudy counted upon Beatrice to help her far more than Gaylord dared to hope.
“Bea is like all her sort,” he warned Trudy when the point of Beatrice’s having to invite the Vondeplosshes for dinner was close at hand; “she is crazy about herself and her money. She would cheat for ten cents and then turn right round and buy a thousand-dollar dress without questioning the price.”
Which was true. Beatrice had never had to acquire any sense of values regarding either money or character. By turns she was penurious and lavish, suspecting a maid of stealing a sheet of notepaper and then writing a handsome check for a charity in which she had only a passing interest. She would send her soiled finery to relief committees, and when someone told her that satin slippers and torn chiffon frocks were not practical she would say in injured astonishment: “Sell them and use the money. I never have practical clothes.”