Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/151

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several shades lighter than her blotched skin, into her face, and her hands and arms were covered with long, ivory-hued mitts, with holes here and there beyond those provided by the art of the lace-maker. She carried a pad of paper and a pencil.

O, Miss Jelliffe! gurgled Miss Darrell, smoothing out her crumpled skirt. This is to be quite an occasion.

I don't believe Maple Valley has ever seen anything like it, returned the society reporter. Look! There are the Atkinson twins. As Gladys and Doris stopped to giggle and chat with John Townsend and his friends, Miss Jelliffe scribbled rapidly on her pad: G. and D. Pink and blue challis.

The crowd pressed in fast now, arriving for the most part on foot, some descending from horse-cars which stopped at an adjacent crossing, a few driving up in landaus and surreys, a scattering approaching in old-fashioned buggies. There was even one steam-propelled locomobile, driven by George S. Collins.

The majority of the women's costumes ran to light summer hues of organdie, duck, lawn, linen, challis, dimity, percale, suisse, batiste, China silk, muslin, and pongee. Some of the ladies wore little capes in three layers, terminating just above the elbow. Others protected their throats with feather boas, white, pink, yellow, and black. Many necks were enclasped in bands of black velvet, on which musk-melon seeds had been sewn in conventional