“I shall stay in New York,” Polly announced, fastening her coat, “and I shall write a grand opera in which Thurley shall sing. You will all have to beg my pardon.” Her brown eyes showed the hurt in them and Sam Sparling began helping her with refractory buttons of her wrap.
“I’ll have my apology engraved on a gold scroll and you can use it for a dinner gong—on the gong handle will be a bas relief of myself—gardenia and all. So you can beat me up thrice a day.”
Thurley was laughing; she wondered if Miss Clergy had napped during the turmoil. “Don’t go,” she begged. “Please stay a long time.”
“We can’t, we’ve a raft of calls. I always take Polly because she can break away so neatly. I’m the sort that sits and sits, ending by halfway swallowing my cane handle and getting nowhere in particular.”
“Will we really go to the matinée?” she asked Polly.
“Of course. I’ll call for you—and tea in Sam’s dressing room. Oh, Thurley, you haven’t begun to realize New York as yet—not Bliss’s New York, but your New York and mine and Sam’s, too.”
“Why do you love it so?” asked Thurley.
Polly leaned her two by four self against a chair as she answered, “Oh, because—when I walk down the Avenue sunny mornings and see ragamuffins sharing an ice cream cone and visiting British peeresses with their fresh faces and dowdy clothes vying with our American heiresses with their smart creations and hunks of black pearls, when I come upon nice, happy boys and girls from up state or clever Middle West men here on important commissions and bronzed cowpunchers and trim naval officers, to say nothing of portly men of finance bowling along—I’m New York mad. Besides, when I have to watch the traffic cops and white baby prams becoming friendly, to gaze at a window of caramels, mountains of them, and right next to it to gaze at a window of paintings on silk guarded by the Pinkertons, when I have to stop to watch the man in Childs’ turn flapjacks and know that inside Sherry’s sit the prettiest, best dressed, quite the most decent men and women in the world nibbling at tomato surprise and whispering as to how many apartment houses the waiters own, when I see Pekinese spaniels airing their new jewelry and mongrels scrapping over a bone, when I can go to a ten-cent movie or sit in a box at the opera and wear Ernestine Christian’s adorable brown velvet dress, when I happen upon dainty brides buying chintz remnants at Wanamaker’s, spotting burglars chatting over their prospects at the Five Points a few moments later—and when I can ride home sardine fashion in a subway express or take a battered hansom what ’as seen better days, pin a bunch of florist’s seconds to my chest and drift down towards Washington Square or, once in a while, be picked up by Caleb or Collin or Ernestine and be glided home in a motor—well—I love New York,” she paused out of breath.
Sam bent and kissed her. “Marry me,” he demanded.