FullReads

The well-trained mind and the steady seeing eye enabled Mary Hubbell to discover that Europe wasn’t so gay as it seemed to the blind; and she didn’t write home to the effect that you’d never know there’d been war.

The Hubbells had the best that Europe could afford. Orson J. Hubbell, a mild-mannered, grey-haired man with a nice flat waist-line and a good keen eye (hence Mary’s) adored his women-folk and spoiled them. During the first years of his married life he had been Hubbell, the drayman, as Giddy Gory had said. He had driven one of his three drays himself, standing sturdily in the front of the red-painted wooden two-horse wagon as it rattled up and down the main business thoroughfare of Winnebago. But the war and the soaring freight-rates had dealt generously with Orson Hubbell. As railroad and shipping difficulties increased the Hubbell draying business waxed prosperous. Factories, warehouses, and wholesale business firms could be assured that their goods would arrive promptly, safely, and cheaply when conveyed by a Hubbell van. So now the three red-painted wooden horse-driven drays were magically transformed into a great fleet of monster motor vans that plied up and down the state of Wisconsin and even into Michigan and Illinois and Indiana. The Orson J. Hubbell Transportation Company, you read. And below, in yellow lettering on the red background:

Have HUBBELL Do Your HAULING.

There was actually a million in it, and more to come. The buying of the old Gory house on the river bluff had been one of the least of Orson’s feats. And now that house was honeycombed with sleeping porches and linen closets and enamel fittings and bathrooms white and glittering as an operating auditorium. And there were shower baths, and blue rugs, and great soft fuzzy bath towels and little white innocent guest towels embroidered with curly H’s whose tails writhed at you from all corners.

Orson J. and Mrs. Hubbell had never been in Europe before, and they enjoyed themselves enormously. That is to say, Mrs. Orson J. did, and Orson, seeing her happy, enjoyed himself vicariously. His hand slid in and out of his inexhaustible pocket almost automatically now. And “How much?” was his favourite locution. They went everywhere, did everything. Mary boasted a pretty fair French. Mrs. Hubbell conversed in the various languages of Europe by speaking pidgin English very loud, and omitting all verbs, articles, adverbs, and other cumbersome superfluities. Thus, to the fille de chambre.

“Me out now you beds.” The red-cheeked one from the provinces understood, in some miraculous way, that Mrs. Hubbell was now going out and that the beds could be made and the rooms tidied.

They reached Nice in February and plunged into its gaieties. “Just think!” exclaimed Mrs. Hubbell rapturously, “only three francs for a facial or a manicure and two for a marcel. It’s like finding them.”

“If the Mediterranean gets any bluer,” said Mary, “I don’t think I can stand it, it’s so lovely.”

Mrs. Hubbell, at tea, expressed a desire to dance. Mary, at tea, desired to dance but didn’t express it. Orson J. loathed tea; and the early draying business had somewhat unfitted his sturdy legs for the lighter movements of the dance. But he wanted only their happiness. So he looked about a bit, and asked some questions, and came back.

“Seems there’s a lot of young chaps who make a business of dancing with the women-folks who haven’t dancing men along. Hotel hires ’em. Funny to us but I guess it’s all right, and quite the thing around here. You pay ’em so much a dance, or so much an afternoon. You girls want to try it?”

“I do,” said Mrs. Orson J. Hubbell. “It doesn’t sound respectable. Then that’s what all those thin little chaps are who have been dancing with those pretty American girls. They’re sort of ratty looking, aren’t they? What do they call ’em? That’s a nice-looking one, over there–no, no!–dancing with the girl in grey, I mean. If that’s one I’d like to dance with him, Orson. Good land, what would the Winnebago ladies say! What do they call ’em, I wonder.”