CHAPTER X
There was still, for Palla, much shopping to do. The drawing room she decided to leave, for the present, caring as she did only for a few genuine and beautiful pieces to furnish the pretty little French grey room.
The purchase of these ought to be deferred, but she could look about, and she did, wandering into antique shops of every class along Fifth and Madison Avenues and the inviting cross streets.
But her chiefest quest was still for pots and pans and china; for napery, bed linen, and hangings; also for her own and more intimate personal attire.
To her the city was enchanting and not at all as she remembered it before she had gone abroad.
New York, under its canopy of tossing flags and ablaze with brilliant posters, swarmed with unfamiliar people. Every other pedestrian seemed to be a soldier; every other vehicle contained a uniform.
There were innumerable varieties of military dress in the thronged streets; there was the universal note of khaki and olive drab, terminating in leather vizored barrack cap or jaunty overseas service cap, and in spiral puttees, leather ones, or spurred boots.
Silver wings of aviators glimmered on athletic chests; chevrons, wound stripes, service stripes, an endless variety of insignia.
Here the grey-green and oxidised metal of the 138 marines predominated; there, the conspicuous sage-green and gold of naval aviators. On campaign hats were every hue of hat cord; the rich gilt and blue of naval officers and the blue and white of their jackies were everywhere to be encountered.