When Miss Elenore Carrington opened her eyes the following morning, it was to gaze contentedly from her bed at a large, square, hotel-placarded object in the center of her room.
Objectively, it was merely an uncommonly good-sized trunk, but subjectively, it stood for Femininity, sweetly personal and newly reincarnated.
“But what do you suppose he put in?” murmured Miss Carrington. And uncertainty became unbearable.
She shook her fist gayly at a masculine-looking bathrobe hanging over the back of a chair. “I won’t put you on again, even to look!” she announced, with a gayly menacing flourish.
She caught the coverings of the bed around her, and was out in a great white splash on the floor, fumbling with the key in the lock.
The trunk lid flew open, and she knelt, looking like a boyish little novice, in the plain white night garment, with the big splash of white spreading all over the floor about her.
She had that floor strewn with her treasures. Lovely frilly feminine garments, dainty slippers all buckle and heel, dear little everyday frocks and lingerie blouses, and gowns for occasions in the big trays beneath. She laughed and blessed Ned as she delved down.
And hats—actually all her hats! But alack-a-day! She clutched her shorn locks with a grimace. And that square package—toilet things; useless hairpins and unusable jeweled shell combs; and here, in tissue paper—oh, the forethought of Ned!—the very locks of hair of which she had shorn herself so recklessly, bound together by the hairdresser’s skill into a lustrous coil that had distinct possibilities.
She looked at it with an admiration such as she had never felt when it was growing on her own head.
She swathed herself in the laciest and swirliest of pale blue silk negligées, and sped to the mirror to experiment.