Page:Whirligigs (1910).djvu/149

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Suite Homes and Their Romance
137

warm and delightful friends, some of whom they remembered the next day. Their home life was an ideal one, according to the rules and regulations of the Book of Bluff.

There came a time when it dawned upon Turpin that his wife was getting away with too much money. If you belong to the near-swell class in the Big City, and your income is $200 per month, and you find at the end of the month, after looking over the bills for current expenses, that you, yourself, have spent $150, you very naturally wonder what has become of the other $50. So you suspect your wife. And perhaps you give her a hint that something needs explanation.

“I say, Vivien,” said Turpin, one afternoon when they were enjoying in rapt silence the peace and quiet of their cozy apartment, “you’ve bene creating a hiatus big enough for a dog to crawl through in this month’s honorarium. You haven’t been paying your dressmaker anything on account, have you?”

There was a moment’s silence. No sounds could be heard except the breathing of the fox terrier, and the subdued, monotonous sizzling of Vivien’s fulvous locks against the insensate curling irons. Claude Turpin, sitting upon a pillow that he had thoughtfully placed upon the convolutions of the apartment sofa, narrowly watched the riante, lovely face of his wife.

“Claudie, dear,” said she, touching her finger to her ruby tongue and testing the unresponsive curling irons, “you do me an injustice. Mme. Toinette has not seen a