Zona Gale

“ The girl had nodded to Arnold and had run away upstairs, and Lawrence had muttered a greeting brightly, and had also vanished. When Arnold had stepped out on the terrace a moment later to breathe in a blessing before breakfast and the frost had caught his face, he had consigned Miss Audrey’s rapid flitting to a probable blue nose. Now, with the little shoe in his pocket, his mind clutched feebly at something vaguely spicier. Princesses were always leaving a slipper behind in their flight. ”

“ Abbott, who was just leaving the table, put Miss Audrey at the tea-tray, and as she sat there in her habit, with her hair straying about her glowing face, which the exercise had lighted almost to prettiness, she held Arnold and the lieutenant and Lawrence in talk about a new skating figure, and a proposed ice-carnival and toboggan-party.
“Oh, but I must be growing old,” again thought Mrs. Crothers wearily. ”

“ Sara said that she would live in a golf-skirt and with her sleeves turned up when she had a house of her own. Lawrence looked adoring, and the girl was so clever that she really made us all so ashamed of our civilized ruffles. Didn’t you notice her dress when you came back?”
“Yes,” said Arnold, “I thought that she had just come. It was mighty becoming, I must say.”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Crothers with indulgent triumph. “My dear Arnold, women neither travel abroad nor take dinner dressed in that way, unless—well, she wore a duplicate costume at breakfast this morning,” she added. ”

“ She was one of the women whose strength and poise are never brandished, like weapons, but instead rest upon them like graces. Her voice was never raised, and her manner was made all of charm and not at all of guile. ”

“ Crothers. “Mornings are as irresistible a temptation to me to be frank and confidential as after-dinner is to most people.”
“What do you want to know?” asked Arnold, acquiescent. When a woman grows confidential he had observed that she grows confidential in questions, not answers. Mrs. Crothers appreciated his understanding and paid it the tribute of a smile.
“Ah, well,” she said, “since you are so clever, do you think that Lawrence and Sara Audrey are in love?”
“Brixton?” asked Arnold frowning. Mrs. Crothers noted the frown and sighed a little. ”

“ Arnold made an impatient movement.
“‘Suited’!” he said. “What do you mean by ‘suited’? What does a woman mean by ‘suited,’ anyhow?”
“Why,” explained Mrs. Crothers, “suited. She can sail Lawrence’s yacht as well as he can—with two men to help her. She will pitch a tent on the links and live there, if Lawrence wants her to. She rides, and I believe she took away the Hermes tennis-cup. She talks about nothing but that kind of thing. I take it for granted that she can skate on dry ground. And you know Lawrence. Outdoors he’s a man of the world. ”

“ Abbott, “I’ve never seen anything more charming. Do, pray, come down as you are, and look quite yourself. Doesn’t everyone say so?”
And everyone but Arnold did say so.
“May Beagle go for a walk with you and me?” asked Arnold, after dinner. Mrs. Crothers looked up quickly, her heart beating unreasonably at the little lift and drop—the something very tender in his voice. He brought her cloak and found Beagle, and they walked on the terrace in the clear night. Beagle snapped unhappily in Arnold’s arms.
“No, Beaglechen,” said Mrs. Crothers, “I’m punishing you by making Arnold carry you. ”

“ Crothers, “between a healthy liking for outdoors, and a fad for liking outdoors, isn’t there? Sara doesn’t sing. She cannot play. I do not recommend her dancing nor her dowry. That is no secret. She knows all this. She has therefore simply gone in for her specialty.”
Arnold listened, half frowning. It was most curious, he was thinking, that a woman who was generous and big-minded should yet resent another woman’s cleverness! ”

“ Crothers.
“Miss Audrey is very jolly,” said Arnold. “I mean, she’s very vivacious and breezy in her talk, and that sort of thing.”
Mrs. Crothers accepted the unconscious challenge and met it magnificently.
“And in her dress too,” she said, “isn’t she? We were all down for dinner last night when she came in from golf. You were dining out, weren’t you? The women were all there. Silvia had on her gold gown, Mrs. Abbott was in black lace, the girls were in white—and in came Sara, blue shirt-waist, sleeves to her elbows. Mrs. Abbott patted her on the cheek and made her come down the way she was. ”

“ Crothers. “She is a type. I know many who do the same thing. I dare say that you will accuse me of talking cant, but isn’t it a pity that so many women throw away a crown and take to wearing bangles, so to speak, instead? ”