“My dear girl, I don’t suppose you want me any more than I want to come and listen to the crickets with their mufflers open all night, but—I ask you—can you entertain a strange young man, Boston, too, isn’t he?—alone?”
“I don’t see why not,” said her niece, coolly. “He isn’t strange at all; he was Aleck’s friend.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter whether you see or not,” said Mrs. Featherstone, crisply. “I’m coming. I suppose I’ll gain eighteen pounds as I did before. See here, will you promise not to let Ling make waffles?” Her carefully tinted face broke up suddenly into little wrinkles of smiles. “There, never mind! I love you if you do weigh a hundred and ten and eat everything!”
Mrs. Featherstone weighed a hundred and sixty-nine and she ate like a canary and thought about food most of the time, and her large, comely face had a chronic expression of wistful yearning. Clergymen and lecturers and interpreters liked having her in the front row; they found her intense concentration and her blue-eyed gaze extremely helpful and inspiring, and they had no way of knowing that she was thinking raptly to herself— “If I should go over to the Palace for lunch and have turkey hash and potatoes au gratin and popovers and a cup of chocolate, and walk all the way home, fast, I don’t believe I’d gain an ounce!”
She was Ginger’s father’s half sister, and she had been twice married. Her first husband had died and her second had been divorced, but she was still on very kindly and pleasant terms with him. He gave her a generous alimony and she was able to live in a smart apartment with a smart maid and wear the smartest of clothes and she wanted for nothing in the world except food.
“Here’s your room, dearie,” she said, piloting her niece into a tiny apricot-colored guest chamber. “I suppose it looks small after the ranch; you couldn’t rope a steer in it, but it’s large enough, if you’re not boisterous. You had to sleep on the davenport when I was at the Livingston, didn’t you? This is no end nicer; it ought to be, heaven knows, with what I pay for it. Jim voluntarily gave me another hundred a month, did I tell you?” She sighed and winked her blue eyes violently. “He’s a prince, if ever there was one. He said it was only fair—H. C. of L., and all that. Now, I’ll just slip into something loose and we’ll have a chatter. Lucinda,” she called the little trim negress, “you make Miss McVeagh a cup of chocolate. You’ll see,” she turned to her niece again, “I’ll watch you drink it without a quiver. I ought to be a martyr or something—you know—hunger strikes—” She went away breathlessly to get out of her armor, and Ginger opened the window and let the keen, foggy night air into the little soft room. She always felt trapped in her Aunt Fan’s pretty abiding places. Nevertheless, she stayed a whole week this time, and got snugly into her aunt’s good graces by buying everything she suggested.
“We’ll get downtown early.” Mrs. Featherstone planned earnestly, the night of her arrival, “oh, bright and early, before any one’s out—by eleven o’clock if we can possibly manage it—and get you some things you can wear right out of the shop, before any one sees you.”
She had an excellent sense of values, Ginger’s Aunt Fan, and she let the girl keep true to type in her selections—a mannish coat suit of heather brown jersey, sport blouse of rough creamy silk, snub-nosed little Scotch brogues and wool stockings, fabric gloves with gauntlet cuffs and smart buckles, and a small brown hat which had plenty of assurance even without its stab of burnt orange. “Now,” said Mrs. Featherstone with a sigh of deep relief, “let’s go!”
They went tirelessly, late forenoons and solid afternoons and Ginger had presently a large trunkful of clever clothes—gay ginghams and crisp organdies, boldly plaided sport skirts and sweaters in solid colors to match, and two evening frocks (though these Ginger protested she would never need) in scarlet and persimmon. “I’m having a color spree,” said Aunt Fan. “All the things I’d adore to wear and can’t.”
They were at Dos Pozos four days before Dean Wolcott was due. Mrs. Featherstone had been watching her niece narrowly. “What’s he like, this chap?” she had wanted to know a day or so after Ginger had come to her.