Maybe it wa'n't some discouragin' a week later to find the same pair still on the job, with Doris as much of a peace disturber as ever. I got a little more of her history sketched out by Vee that night. Seems that Doris didn't really belong, for all her airs. Her folks had only lived up in the West 70's for four or five years, and before that——
"Well, you know," says Vee, archin' her eyebrows expressive, "on the East Side somewhere."
You see, Father had been comin' strong in business of late,—antiques and house decoratin'. I remember havin' seen the name over the door of his big Fifth-ave. shop,—Leo Ull. You know there's about five hundred per cent, profit in that game when you get it goin', and while Pa Ull might have started small, in an East 14th Street basement, with livin' rooms in the rear, he kept branchin' out,—gettin' to Fourth-ave., and fin'lly to Fifth, jumpin' from a flat to an apartment, and from that to a reg'lar house.
So the two boys went to college, and later on little Doris, with long braids down her back and weeps in her eyes, is sent off to a girls' boardin' school. By the time her turn came too, the annual income was runnin' into six figures. Besides, Doris was the pet. And when Pa and Ma Ull sat down to pick out a young ladies' culture fact'ry for her the process was simple. They discarded all but three of the catalogues, savin' them that was printed on the thickest paper and havin' the most halftone pictures, and then put the tag on the one where the rates was highest. Near Washington, I think it was; anyway, somewhere South,—board and tuition, two thousand dollars and up; everything extra, from lead pencils to lessons in court etiquette; and the young ladies limited to ten new evenin' dresses a term.
Maybe you've seen products of such exclusive establishments? And if you have perhaps you can frame up a faint picture of what Doris was like after four years at Hetherington Hall and a five months' trip abroad chaperoned by the Baroness Parcheezi. No wonder she didn't find home a happy spot after that!
"Her brothers are quite nice, I believe," says Vee. "They're both married, though. Mr. Ull is not so bad, either,—a little crude perhaps; but he has learned to wear a frock coat in the shop and not to talk to lady customers when he has a cigar between his teeth. But Mrs. Ull—well, she hasn't kept up, that's all."
"Still on East 14th Street, eh?" says I.
Vee admits that nearly states the case. "And of course," she goes on, "she doesn't understand Doris. They don't get on at all well. So when Doris told me how lonely and unhappy she was at home and begged me to visit her for a week in return—well, what could I do? I'm going back with her Monday."
"Then," says I, "I see where I cut next Friday off the calendar."
"Unless," suggests Vee, droppin' her long eyelashes coy, "you were not too stupid to think of——"