Ernestine Christian did not return to town until February, having been induced to play engagements on the Pacific coast. It was the mid-winter thaw when she arrived. She telephoned Thurley almost immediately and, to Thurley’s delight, asked her to come and have coffee that afternoon as it was a Sunday and lessons were not a consideration.
“Sure you won’t come along?” Thurley asked Miss Clergy, dutifully, as she made ready.
“Quite sure, my dear. This wind would start every bone aching to perdition,” Miss Clergy told her, “and do put on a prettier dress—there may be guests.”
Thurley looked at her proverbial blue serge with hesitation. “Oh, I can’t bother to be done up in a real creation—we’ve such loads to talk over and Ernestine’s clothes are the sort one never really notices and yet, describing them as detached things, they are quite wonderful. Do you think I ought to change?” for it suggested itself to her that Bliss Hobart might drop in for greetings.
“I should. You can’t be too particular, Thurley. The time is coming when the world will want to know what sort of frocks you wear every clock stroke of the day.” Here Miss Clergy yawned and settled back among innumerable cushions and Thurley spied the cover of a popular novel—one of Caleb’s, to make it the more amusing—peeping forth.
“Well, if I must—I must,” she said, darting into her room and donning a tea-green velour with wee fur buttons up to the arctic verge of her pink ears. She wrapped a mantle of green around herself in careless, becoming fashion, kissed Miss Clergy somewhere between the chin and forehead and left her to revel in Caleb’s self-starting romance in which a homely hero was quite the mode.
She found Ernestine walking about her salon with Silver Heels perched cordially on her shoulder, purring for joy at his mistress’ return. Ernestine was busy telling the maid wherein she had neglected to carry out orders and why the decorators would be recalled to make amends. There was a pettish air about her criticisms, Thurley thought, for when Thurley came in with wide opened arms, Ernestine merely gave her a shoulder pat, saying,
“Don’t try to visit until I’ve finished my anvil chorus. On Caleb’s recommendation I had a firm do things for me—gaze at the fiasco. It is terribly disquieting to leave one’s place as one likes it and return to find it the back parlor of a flourishing merchant!”
“Oh, but it doesn’t look so!” Thurley defended. “That fire screen is a joy.”
“It may as well be put away,” Ernestine told the maid. “There’ll be a charity kettle-drum soon enough and I’ll have to donate something for the raffle. That will do nicely. Every one wants things one has worn or used—I’ve a notion the next time to send my last quarter’s telephone directory—I don’t doubt but what it would actually be bid for ... there, Agnes, get hold of the firm early in the morning and don’t call me. You know what is wrong and I cannot personally stand a battle with interior decorators. Come inside, Thurley; take off your green riding-hood cloak and let me see you. Ah, lovely, lovely!” she caressed the gown as Thurley would have wished to be caressed herself. “Why, you have promoted yourself famously—the hair is charming, not a hint of Birge’s Corners left! Nice child, how proud we shall all be—go ’way, Silver Heels, I’ve a new playmate—shall we stay in my room and pray heaven no one interrupts us? I ordered black coffee and crullers so we can be extra wild. Tell me all you have seen and done.”