“Yes, dear,” Mrs. Winters croons at her, she is being motherly. The effect produced is rather that of a sudden assumption of life and vicarious motherhood on the part of a small, brightly-painted porcelain hen.
“Then they will be sending you over shortly, no doubt? Across the wide wide sea—” adds Mrs. Winters archly, but Nancy is too tired-looking to respond to the fancy.
“I suppose they will when they get ready,” she answers briefly and returns to her chicken-croquette with the thought that in its sleekness, genteelness, crumblingness, and generally unnourishing qualities it is really rather like Mrs. Winters. An immense desire, after two weeks of Mrs. Winters' mental and physical cuisine for something as hearty and gross as the mere sight of a double planked steak possesses her achingly—but Mrs. Winters was told once that she “ate like a bird.”
“Well, in that case, dear Nancy, you certainly must not leave New York indefinitely without making the most of your opportunities,” Mrs. Winters' tones are full of genteel decision. “I have made out a little list, dear Nancy, of some things which I thought, in my funny old way, might possibly be worth your while. We will talk it over after dinner, if you like—”
“Thank you so much, dear Mrs. Winters” says Nancy with dutiful hopelessness. She is only too well acquainted with Mrs. Winters' little lists. “As an artist, as an artist, dear Nancy, especially.” Mrs. Winters breathes somewhat heavily, “Things That Should Interest you. Nothing Bizarre, you understand, Nothing Merely Freakish—but some of the Things in New York that I, Personally, have found Worth While.”
The Things that Mrs. Winters Has Found Personally Worth While include a great many public monuments. She will give Nancy a similar list of Things Worth While in Paris, too, before Nancy sails—and Nancy smiles acceptably as each one of them is mentioned.
Only Mrs. Winters cannot see what Nancy is thinking—for if she did she might become startlingly human at once as even the most perfectly poised of spinsters is apt to do when she finds a rat in the middle of her neat white bed. For Nancy is thinking quite freely of various quaint and everlasting places of torment that might very well be devised for Mrs. Winters—and of the naked fact that once arrived in Paris it will matter very little to anybody what becomes of her and least of all to herself—and that Mrs. Winters doesn't know that she saw a chance mention of Mr. Oliver Crowe, the author of “Dancer's Holiday” today in the “Bookman” and that she cut it out because it had Oliver's name in it and that it is now in the smallest pocket of her bag with his creased and recreased first letter and the lucky piece she had from her nicest uncle and a little dim photograph of Mr. Ellicott and half a dozen other small precious things.
XXX
The dance is at the Piper's this time—the last Piper dance of the Southampton season and the biggest—other people may give dances after it but everybody who knows will only think of them as relatively pleasant or useless addenda. The last Piper Dance has been the official period to the Southampton summer ever since Elinor's début—and this time the period is sure to be bigger and rounder than ever since it closes the most successful season Southampton has ever had.