FullReads

“When Ferdie does things like this,” said Sally, heatedly, “I declare I wonder–I was going to say I wonder he has a friend left in the world! As you say, it’s done now, but it makes me so FURIOUS! And I don’t think it shows very much savior faire on your part, Elsie. However, we won’t discuss it! Ferdie will try one joke too many, one of these days, and then–Now, look here, Elsie,” Sally interrupted her tirade to state with deadly deliberation, “unless that man goes home before dinner, as a man of any spirit would do, I’m going over to Mary Bevis’s, and you can make whatever apologies you like!”

“Of course he won’t go,” said Elsie, with spirit. “The only thing to do is to ignore it entirely. And of course you’ll come down.”

Sally had resumed her ruffled calling costume, and was now pinning on an effective hat. Her mouth was set.

“Please!” pleaded her sister, inserting a gold bracelet tenderly between George’s little jaws, without moving her eyes from Sally.

“I will not!” said Sally. “I never want to see him again–superior, big, calm codfish–too lofty to care what any one says about him! I don’t like a man you can walk on, anyway!” She began to pack things in a suit-case–beribboned night-wear, slippers, powder, and small jars. Presently, hasping these things firmly in, she went to the door, and opened it a cautious crack.

“Where are they?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Ferdie, dispiritedly. “I think you’re very mean!”

The bedrooms of the Ferdies’ house opened in charming Southern fashion upon open balconies, over whose slender rails one could look straight into the hall below. Sally listened intently.

“What a horrible plan this house is built upon!” she said heartily. “Nothing in the world is more humiliating than to have to sneak about one’s own house like a thief, afraid of being seen! Where’s the motor–at the side door? Good. I’ll run it over to the Bevises’ myself, and Billy can come back with it. That is, I will if I can manage to get to the side door. Those idiots of men are apparently looking at Ferd’s rods and tackle, right down there in the hall! I can distinctly hear their voices! I wish Ferd had thought of situations like this when he planned this silly balcony business! The minute I open this door they’ll look up; and I’ll stay up here a week rather than meet them!”

“They’ll go out soon,” said Elsie, soothingly, as she removed a shoe-horn from contact with George’s mouth.

“I knew Ferd would regret this balcony!” pursued Sally, eyes to the crack.

“Ferdie’s not regretting it!” tittered her sister.

Sally cast her a withering glance. Elsie devoted herself suddenly to George.

“Go down and lure them into the garden,” pleaded Sally, presently.

Elsie obligingly picked up her son and departed, but Sally, watching her go, was infuriated to notice that a mild request from George’s nurse, who met them in the hall, apparently drove all thoughts of Sally’s predicament from the little mother’s mind, for Elsie went briskly toward the nursery, and an absolute silence ensued.

Sally went listlessly to the window, where her eye was immediately caught by a long pruning ladder, leaning against the house a dozen feet away. Alma, the little waitress, quietly mixing a mayonnaise on the kitchen porch, was pressed into service, and five minutes later Sally’s suit-case was cautiously lowered, on the end of a Mexican lariat, and Sally was steadying the top of the ladder against her window-sill. Alma was convulsed with innocent mirth, but her big, hard hands were effective in steadying the lower end of the ladder.

Sally, who was desperately afraid of ladders, packed her thin skirts tightly about her, gave a fearful glance below, and began a nervous descent. At every alternate rung she paused, unwound her skirts, shut her eyes, and breathed hard.

“PLEASE don’t shake it so!” she said.