Carolyn Wells

“ She looked at Warble appraisingly.
“You're a tuppenny, ha'penny chit, with eyes like two holes burnt in a blanket, and a nose Mr. Micawber might have waited for, but you'll do. You get everything you want, without effort, and that's a rare trait. What do you think of me?”
Warble made a face at her. “Corking!” screamed Aunt Dressie, “you come straight from heaven and you've slid into my soul. Does Bill love you?”
“Not adequately.”
“H'm. You love him?”
“Oh, yeth!”
“All right—love and grow thin, and then he'll come round. Or get a case of ptomaine poisoning—that'd help. ”

“ The Mack Sennett party at the home of Dr. Bill Petticoat was a hundred per cent success. Little Lady Petticoat is nobody's fool. She knows that a lucky punch is her only chance. A short, swift hook, straight from the shoulder. The pretty Warble is a perpetual promise of joy, yet she shows symptoms of curvature of the soul—and it is, so far, a toss-up whether she will have her passport viséd or be given the gate. ”

“ Big Bill Petticoat and his bride, Warble.
They had been married and had spent their honeymoon in riotous loving.
It had been transforming. Warble had been frightened to discover how hungry she could be even on a wedding trip.
Bill had mused to himself; what's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? One honeymoon. And now they had reached their home town. People were not altogether new to Warble. ”

“ She had little notebooks filled with rules for Parisian pastry, Hindu recipes for curry; foreign dishes with modern American improvements.
Joyously she learned to make custard pie. This, as the tumultous future proved, was indicative.
Only the little smiling gods of circumstance, wickedly winking at one another, knew that when Warble whipped cream and beat eggs, she laid the corner stone of a waiting Destiny, known as yet but to the blinking stars above the murky Pittsburgh sky. ”

“ A dainty Sedan with a woman's idle face at its window wafted by. From a Greek Temple came the sound of Interpretative Dancing, and the applause of perfunctory hands.
She wanted to elope. Her own ideas of utility, efficiency, and economy were being shattered—broken in pieces like a potter's vessel. Her sense of proportion, her instinct for relative values, her abhorrence of waste motion, her inborn system and method, all were swept away as a thief in the night. Could she reform this giddy whirl? Could she bring chaos out of cosmos? Was her own ego sufficient to egg her on in her chosen work? ”

“ A blind man. Of no interest save that he had a calm and gentle demeanor and was the only one who didn't spill things. His face wore a grieved but resigned look, as if something had died in his scrambled eggs. The iceman, who had the hard, set jaw of a prize fighter was successfully eating steak, and he welcomed the incoming fried potatoes, as one greets a new instalment of a serial.
It was a fat and pink and lovely Warble who at last trotted back with Petticoat's order.
The great specialist had an unbridled passion for pie, and throwing restraint to the winds he had ordered three kinds. ”

“ As the sea's self should heed a pebble-cast.
On a June evening, when Petticoat was called to Iva Payne's, Porgie came.
Bowed in by a thin red line of footmen, he found Warble in the moon-parlor. She wore a picture frock of point d'esprit and tiny pink rosebuds, and little pink socks and sandals.
“Come out on the Carp Pond,” he muttered, picking her up and stuffing her in his pocket. “Nobody will see us.” ”

“ Say, you waitress!”
Of the love-making of Warble and Big Bill Petticoat there is nothing to be reported which may not be read in any Satevepost serial, which may not be heard at any summer resort, in any winter garden. They were zoology and history. Their speech was free silver and their silence was golden.
It was a non-stop courtship. All the plump beauty of youth and all the assured complacence of a well-to-do married man kept them up in the air. ”

“ But all women are. They took it up again.
“Can I reform them? Or shall I be sucked in, like Italians eat spaghetti, and my personality absorbed by the Butterflies, till I forswear all I stand for—all my utilitarian ideals shattered, all my prosaic hopes dashed, all my common sense wrenched from me, and my poor little brain-pan filled with the soul-mash of these high-strung sexaphones?”
She ignored Beer's offer to undress her, she ran upstairs to an unfrequented bathroom, and flinging off her clothes, she got into the tub and wept in terror, her body a round pink blob in the briny water. ”

“ Big Bill Petticoat was far from being effeminate. He was found of aesthetics and anaesthetics, and his chief interests in life were beauty and his big bills.
“What's the use of beauty, if a thing isn't useful?” Warble would ask, and Petticoat would reply, “What's the use of use, anyway? There's no use in having anything that isn't beautiful.”
And as the house was under Petticoat rule, Big Bill won out.
“You must have a party, Warble,” Petticoat said, as he fitted a long, slim cigarette into a long, slim holder. ”

“ One of the men was yelling at Petticoat:
“Hop into my car, Bill, Don't see yours—I'll tote the bride-person you've got there—with joy and gladness.” Warble looked at the yeller.
“Can't quite place me, chick, can you?” he grinned at her. “Well I'm only old Goldwin Leathersham—no use for me in the world but to spend money. Want me to spend some on you? Here's my old thing—step up here, Marigold, and be introduced. She's really nicer than she looks, Mrs. Petticoat.” ”

“ Here we are,” and Petticoat rescued his bride from the middle of a crowd and yanked her toward his car.
The car was a museum piece, and as Warble caromed into its cushions she felt that her lines had fallen in pleasant places.
That was the way Fate came to Warble. In big fat chunks, in slathers. Unexpected, sudden, inescapable—that's Fate all over.
“I shall like Mr. Leathersham—I shall call him Goldie. They're all nice and friendly—the men. But this town! Oh, my Heavens! This Jewel Casket—this Treasure Table! I can't live through it! This Floating Island of a Tipsy Charlotte!” ”

“ I don't want to be a miniature painter all my life. But to be a ragpicker—ah, there's something to strive for! A rattlebanging cart, with jangling bells on a string across the back, a galled jade of a horse, broken traces, mismated lines—whoa!—giddap, there! oh—Warble, come with me! ”

“ In her fresh frilled dimity and soft sash of baby-blue Surah, her rolled white socks disclosing but a few tantalizing inches of seashell-pink calf, Warble stood, eyes cast down, a pretty, foolish thing,
As soft as young, As gay as soft,
and, to a man, the male population of Butterfly Center fell for her. ”

“ Speak out, man!”
“Why, you see, I am a solist—like a palmist you know—but as to feet. I studied solistry in Asia Minor and I know it from the ground up. Oh, please, Mrs. Petticoat, let me read your sole!”
“Do,” cried Warble, “love to have you.”
She plumped herself into a pillowed divan, and held her little pink feet straight out in front of her.
Goodsport, sitting on a cushion at her feet, took one and scrutinized the sole.
“The Solar system,” he began, “is interesting in the extreme. It was invented by Solon, though Platoe also theorized on the immortality of the sole. ”

“ Four days later, Daisy Snow called and gave Warble a jolt or two.
“Huh, sizing me up, are they?” Warble sniffed. “Looking at me through the footle, distorted little microscope of their own silly scrubby little souls! Pooh, they couldn't, one of them, make a decent puff paste!”
“But we can get cooks to do that. The Intelligentsia seek for the rare essence of thought, for colored words and perfumed cadences—”
“There, there, Daisy, don't try me too far! What did Lotta Munn say about me?” ”

“ Warble cried. “I had not heard of it, but if Bill does that he's more efficient than I thought him!”
“I spose he's terribly in love with you?”
“Bill? Oh, yes. We adore each other.”
“I didn't know. The Petticoats are all so thin—”
“Yes, a change is always pleasant.” Warble gave her engaging smile.
“Maybe. That Daisy Snow now—she's so pretty and slender. Dr. Petticoat seems mighty fond of her.”
“Well, you know what doctors are. Nice to everybody, of course. There's no telling who'll have ptomaine poisoning next.”
“Oh, yes, you can always tell that. It's sure to be Iva Payne. ”

“ Beer taught her how to wear jewelry, and directed what pieces she should ask Petticoat for next.
Altogether, Warble was trying out things—but carefully, as a good housewife tries out lard.
And she was not yet certain as to the results. Environment has to reckon, now and then with heredity.
Warble, at soul, all for utility, economy, diligence and efficiency, transplated to Butterfly Center, with its keynote of careless idleness, waste motion and extravagance.
One must win out. Had she a Dempsey of a heredity against a Carpentier of an environment? ”

“ Influence is wonderful! To invent a new simile, it is like a pebble dropped into a placid lake; the ripples form ever-widening circles, and the influence of an influence is never wholly lost.
“Perhaps—and this is quite as it should be—the final stanza is the finest of all. It starts out under the influences of Walt Whitman. Had Walt been omitted, the whole structure would have tumbled to the ground! No self-respecting poet now-a-days writes without being influenced by Whitman. It isn't done. It would be as indiscreet as to appear in one's shirt-sleeves. ”

“ In the pantry she found the under scullery maid screaming with an earache.
“You poor child,” she said, sympathetically, “I'll run and get my husband and he'll cure it.”
She flew back to the room where the eager group had their heads together over the blue prints and wash drawing of the new color organ. Pushing in between Iva and Lotta she seized Bill by the arm and said, “hurry up now—matter of life or death—Polly, the maid—dying—urgent case—”
By that time they were down in the servant's pantry where Polly was moaning and groaning and wailing like a banshee. ”

“ He was not unlike John Barrymore in The Jest, and Warble fell for him afresh.
“You are so beautiful—” she wailed. “I wish you loved me—”
“I wish I did,” he returned, honestly, “but you are such a butter-ball.”
“Oh, Butterfly Thenter calls anybody Butter-ball who weights over ninety-five! If you're so cut up about it I won't live under this roof another minute! I can earn my own living, and all I want, too! You can get a divorce and marry some thread of a woman who has ptomaines all the time!” ”

“ Warble said, sidling up to him. “And I'm happy. But...”
“Look out! Don't let the cat get that bolt of ribbon to play with!”
She smoothed his pillows and patted his sheets, while Petticoat glanced at her a little suspiciously, from under his gabled eyebrows.
“But I don't say that Butterfly Center is worth the ground it's built on. I don't admit that Ptomaine Street is as useful as a Hoboken alley. I don't admit that Art is any good at all. I've fought like a tiger and I didn't make a dent on the Butterflies—but, I have grown thin!” “Sure, you bet you have!” ”

“ Big Bill asked, gently, for Polly was a very pretty girl. “Oh, my ear! It aches and stings and burns and smarts and—”
“That'll do for a beginning,” Dr. Petticoat said, rolling up his sleeves and calling for basins of sterilized water and various antiseptics and disinfectants.
“Can you do anything, Bill?” Warble asked anxiously, “it isn't ptomaines, you know.”
“That's the devil of it! Why couldn't the silly thing have had a decent bit of ptomaine poisoning instead of this foolish earache. But, it's more than an earache! The bally ear has been stung—or something—anything bite you, Polly?” ”

“ Her cherries bobbing, two long-stemmed ones held between her teeth, she flew around like a hen with its head off.
“You see,” she explained, “it's a Mack Sennett party, everybody puts things down everybody's back. Like this—and here are the things.”
From a tray brought by a footman, Warble selected a fuzzy caterpillar and turning quickly dropped it down inside the soft collar of Trymie Icanspoon, a poet, who would dress as he pleased. ”

“ It warmed the cockles of Warble's heart to see how they all fell in with this suggestion. Could it be? Was she really having some effect on their terrible aestheticism at last?
Absorbed in her thoughts, she ate her pies and when the contest was over the prize was awarded to Warble Petticoat. “Oh,” she cried, astounded. “I wasn't in the game at all! The hostess never should be. I was just eating what I wanted.”
“You're a dear,” Marigold Leathersham said to her. “I'm going to love you. How your husband must adore you, you pretty thing.”
“Yes, he does.” Warble stated. ”

“ Cocktails, cigarettes, snatches of wild cabaret songs and dances—oh, Daisy Snow is a caution!”
“The Leathershams?”
“He's a profiteer—she—well, she was a cook—”
“Marigold! No!”
“Marigold, yes! You are a little numskull, you know. You can't see through these people's masks.”
“Can I reform them?”
“No, Baby Doll, you can't do that. They're dyed in the wool hypocrites—joined to their idols—let 'em alone. And as to that husband of yours—”
“Stop! Stop! I can't stand any more! Pleathe go—pleathe—”
“What're you going to do about that Tertium Quid you've annexed?” ”

“ Warble, sitting on the other end of the now separated chaise longue made no reply, except to scratch her leg a little.
Petticoat yawned, took a stroll round the room, tried on a new dressing gown, mixed himself a highball, smoked three cigarettes, glanced through “What the Swell-dressed Man can Spare,” wound his watch, put out his Angora cat, yawned again, sneezed twice, stomped out in the hall and back, and then went and stood in front of the fireplace, teetering on his heels. ”

“ Warble gazed at her guest. She was a tall, angular woman, so gaunt that her bones rattled. Warble wondered if Bill would really like her to be like that.
“Oh, I am. My dear husband, my darling children—you ought to have a lot of children, Mrs. Petticoat.”
“Yes, I shall, when we can afford it. My husband isn't very well off just now, you see.”
“You live very extravagantly. Look at those rugs, now. Rugs cost fearfully.” ”