Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/127

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CARLOTTA SEES RED
115

"Of all the jay towns!" she exclaimed. "Modern improvements, huh!"

The claims of Broadway, even of Harlem, she'd back against Preble Street—against the world!

Then she caught sight of the bay and far-off masts, some of them dropping below the verge, and hurling her vanity case across the room, cried:

"To Hell with that long journey!"

Still she felt a grim foreboding, as if that grim defiance hadn't quite settled it.

Recovering her spirits a little later, she arrayed herself in what she considered her most fashionable dress, a smashing thing woven of flame and snow, with a toque of swan's wings concealing her black hair, and so, like some bright flamingo, sought the Huntington home.

Arrived at her goal, she surveyed it critically, caustically.

"So there's flowers an trees an' everythin'. An' apples hangin' on 'em—the scene-painters wasn't lyin' after all." She raised an imaginary lorgnette in haughty showgirl fashion, "Chawming place—reminds me of—the morchuary on Twenty-third Street. I wonder if the Squire an' Lord Percy are to hum."

The latter, the former informed her, was out. The very door was banged in her face, sending her rage a degree or two higher. However, she decided that she would postpone the fireworks. They could come later—at the, what was it Abie Clout said, oh yes, in the physiological (!) moment. So she flounced down the walk, and sat on the bench for a half-hour or so, commenting with forceful irony on the charm of