“Horrid creatures, always wanting more! Well, they won’t get it. I think Steve is ridiculous with his banquets and bonuses and all, and upon my word, Mary Faithful has as good an Oriental rug in her office as I have in my house. Tell us something really important, Miss Flinks.”
Retrieving her error the beauty doctor whispered a scandal concerning the newly married Teddy Markhams, 150 who had had such a violent quarrel the week before that Mrs. Teddy had pushed the piano halfway out the window and police had rushed to the scene thinking it might be another bomb explosion.
“How ripping!”
Beatrice was all animation, and she gave Miss Flinks no peace until she learned all the details, and the rumour about the actress who had rented an expensive town house for the season and a débutante who was being rushed to a retreat to prevent her marriage to a gypsy violinist who had already taught her the drug habit.
Trudy telephoned the latter part of the afternoon, and as it was a gray, blowy day with nothing special to do to revive one’s spirits Beatrice urged her to come in for tea––tea to be cocktails and buttered toast.
Within a few moments she appeared––a symphony of blonde broadcloth set in black furs, very charming and chic, and so solicitous about Aunt Belle’s recently removed mole and the scar left by the electric needle, and so admiring of the two newly beautified ladies that they were quite won in spite of themselves.
“Were you near here when you telephoned?” Beatrice asked, curiously. “You weren’t ten minutes getting here and you look as spick and span as if you had stepped out of a bandbox.”
“Look outside and you’ll see that Gay and I have had a true case of auto-intoxication!”
Outside the window there proved to be a smart, selfish roadster, battleship-gray with vivid scarlet trimmings.
“Well!” Beatrice said in astonishment. At this identical moment she began to envy Trudy. She was 151 really ashamed of the fact, nor did she understand why she should envy this bankrupt yet progressive little nobody in her homemade bargain-remnant costume. The reason was that Beatrice’s latent abilities longed to be doing something, achieving something, capturing, inventing, destroying, earning if need be––but doing something. The daughter of Mark and Hannah Constantine could not help but have the germ of great ability within her, sluggish and spoiled as it might be; and it must perforce duly manifest itself from time to time. Beatrice realized that Trudy felt a greater joy and satisfaction in displaying this not-paid-for cheap machine––having sat up half the night to make the shirred curtains––than Beatrice ever could feel in her tapestry-lined, orchid-adorned limousine. So she began to envy Trudy just as Trudy envied her. Trudy had done nothing but struggle to be able to live, as she termed it; Beatrice had never been allowed to struggle!