CHAPTER VIII
Kedzie was smitten with two facts: the canopied bed was raised on a platform, and the marble bath-tub was sunk in the floor. She sat on the bed and bounced up and down on the springs. She stared up at the tasseled baldachin with its furled draperies, and fingered the lace covering and the silken comforter.
She sat in the best chairs, studied the dressing-table with its royal equipment. She went to the window and gazed out into Fifth Avenue, reviewing its slow-flowing lava of humanity—young royalty overlooking her subjects.
Mrs. Abby, the housekeeper, knocked and came in to be presented to the new Princess of Wales, and to present the personal maid who had been assigned to her. Even Mrs. Dyckman was afraid of Mrs. Abby, who lacked the suavities of Wotton. Mrs. Abby gave Kedzie the chill of her life, and Kedzie responded with an ardent hatred.
The maid, a young Frenchwoman, found her black dress with its black silk apron an appropriate uniform, since her father, three brothers, a dozen cousins, and two or three of her sweethearts were at the wars. Some of them were dead, she knew, and the others were on their way along the red stream that was bleeding France white, according to German hopes.
Liliane, being a foreigner, saw in Kedzie the pathos of the alien, and with the unequaled democracy of the French, forgave her her plebeiance for that sake. She welcomed Kedzie's beauty, too, and regarded her as a doll of the finest ware, whom it would be fascinating to dress up. Kedzie and Liliane would prosper famously.
Liliane resolved that when Kedzie appeared at dinner she should reflect credit not only on “Monsieur Zheem,” but on Liliane as well. When Kedzie's trunk arrived and Liliane drew forth the confections of Lady Powell-Carewe she knew that she had all the necessary weapons for a sensation.
Kedzie felt more aristocracy in being fluttered over by a French maid with an accent than in anything she had encountered yet. Liliane's phrase “Eef madame pair-meet” was a constant tribute to her distinction.