Mrs. Capron, indignantly whisking her skirt away from a strange-looking arrangement of corset steels and barrel staves connected by wires, strode into some deep grass, then gave vent to a majestic hawk of displeasure:
“What’s this I got on my shoes? Fly-paper? For the land’s sake! Now how in the name of Job do I get that off?”
Mrs. Tyarck, ingratiatingly perturbed, came to the rescue of her friend; the two wrestled with adhesive bits of paper, but certain fragments, affected by contact, fulfilled their utmost prerogative and were not detachable. When they were finally prevailed upon to leave the shoe of Mrs. Capron, they stuck with surprising pertinacity to the glove of her friend. The outcries of the two ladies were full of disgust and criticism.
“Well, Frenzy Giddings! You need a man in here! Some one to clean up after you. All this old paper ’n’ stuff around! It’s a wonder you don’t get into it yourself, but then you know where to step,” they said, grudgingly.
Miss Frenzy hardly heard them; she was still peering carefully under the leaves and around the many clusters of babyish rosebuds. “Ah-ah!” she was still saying, shudderingly. Out went her hand with the same abhorrent gesture. “After all my watchfulness! Another, and another!”
Mrs. Capron, indignant over this indifference to her fly-paper discomfort, now sought recognition of the damages she had sustained:
“I dun’no’ will this plaguey stuff ever come off my mohair! Well, I’ll never set foot in here again! Say, Frenzy, I can send up one of my boys to-morrow and he’ll clean up for you, fly-paper and all, for ten cents.”
For a moment Miss Frenzy hesitated. She stood tall and sheltering over the rose-bush, the little shawl thrown over her shoulders lifted in the breeze. She looked something like a gray moth: her arms long and thin like antennæ, her spectacled eyes, gave her a moth’s fateful look of flutter and blindness before light and scorching flame.
“You are most kind, but”—with a discouraged sigh—“it cannot be done.”
“It can’t be done?” hawked Mrs. Capron.