“Where are you living––here in Washington?”
“Laws, no!” said Abbie; and that reminded her of the bundles she had dropped at the sight of Mamise. They had played havoc with the sidewalk traffic, but she hurried to regain them.
Jake could be the gentleman when there was somebody looking who counted. So he checked his wife with amazement at the preposterousness of her carrying bundles while Sir Walter Raleigh was at hand. He picked them up and brought 159 them to Marie Louise’s feet, disgusted at the stupid amazement of his wife, who did not have sense enough to conceal it. Marie Louise was growing alarmed at the perfect plebeiance of her kith. She was unutterably ashamed of herself for noticing such things, but the eye is not to blame for what it can’t help seeing, nor the ear for what is forced upon it. She had a feeling that the first thing to do was to get her sister in out of the rain of glances from the passers-by.
“You must come to me at once,” she said. “I’ve just taken a house. I’ve got no servants in yet, and you’ll have to put up with it as it is.”
Abbie gasped at the “servants.” She noted the authority with which Marie Louise beckoned a chauffeur and pointed to the bundles, which he hastened to seize.
Abbie was overawed by the grandeur of her first automobile and showed it on her face. She saw many palaces on the way and expected Marie Louise to stop at any of them. When the car drew up at Marie Louise’s home Abbie was bitterly disappointed; but when she got inside she found her dream of paradise. Marie Louise was distressed at Abbie’s loud praise of the general effect and her unfailing instinct for picking out the worst things on the walls or the floors. This distress caused a counter-distress of self-rebuke.
Jake was on his dignity at first, but finally he unbent enough to take off his coat, hang it over a chair, and stretch himself out on a divan whose ulterior maroon did not disturb his repose in the least.
“This is what I call something like,” he said; and then, “And now, Mamise, set in and tell us all about yourself.”
This was the last thing Mamise wanted to do, and she evaded with a plea:
“I can wait. I want to hear all about you, Abbie darling. How are you, and how long have you been married, and where do you live?”