"You'll be Mrs. Enslee, and I suppose I'll be Mrs. William Enslee, or Mrs. Little Willie, sha'n't I, mama? Do you want me to call you mama, or shall I stick to Mrs. Enslee?"
"As you like, my dear," said Mrs. Enslee, with a little shudder at being "mama" to a strange woman and a rival. Persis rattled on in ill-managed embarrassment.
"It will be pretty mixy with two Mrs. William Enslees, won't it? Like two in a single bed—pardon me! I'll have to be awfully good or awfully careful, sha'n't I, for fear my letters may fall into your hands? But I'll promise not to give away what I find in yours if you won't tell on me."
Mrs. Enslee was rather pleased than offended at this. At least it credited her with the ability to create scandal.
She was like Mrs. Neff in hating to get too old to be suspected.
She smiled at Persis with Spanish coquetry, and offered her aid in the appalling details of announcing the engagement. It was the new mode to use the telephone for the more intimate friends. For others there were letters, calls, advertisements, luncheons, and dinners in all the exquisite degrees of familiarity.
She and Persis were going into business for a while on a large scale—a business for which Persis was peculiarly fitted and in which she developed an extraordinary energy.
When Persis had returned to New York from the Enslee country place to find her father helpless and dejected, the offer of Willie's aid had acted like a magic elixir. It had meant the payment of old bills, or their enlargement, and the opening of new credits. Dealers whom the mercantile agencies had secretly filled with alarm for the Cabot accounts had been subtly reassured.
In place of letters of pathetic appeal for a little something to meet a pay-roll there came letters announcing private views of new importations. Persis' own father called her his loan-broker, and said that she had earned the usual commission; he ordered her to buy new things. He complained of the shabbiness of her hats. Why hadn't she bought the lot she had spoken to him about some time ago? She did at once—and more.
Persis was like a child waking from a bad dream to find that it is Christmas morning and that its stockings are cornucopias spilling over with glittering toys.