FullReads

II.

[In the interior of the elevator are seated MRS. ROBERTS’S AUNT MARY (MRS. CRASHAW), MRS. CURWEN, and MISS LAWTON; MR. MILLER and MR. ALFRED BEMIS are standing with their hats in their hands. They are in dinner costume, with their overcoats on their arms, and the ladies’ draperies and ribbons show from under their outer wraps, where they are caught up, and held with that caution which characterizes ladies in sitting attitudes which they have not been able to choose deliberately. As they talk together, the elevator rises very slowly, and they continue talking for some time before they observe that it has stopped.]

MRS. CRASHAW.
“It’s very fortunate that we are all here together. I ought to have been here half an hour ago, but I was kept at home by an accident to my finery, and before I could be put in repair I heard it striking the quarter past. I don’t know what my niece will say to me. I hope you good people will all stand by me if she should be violent.”

MILLER.
“In what a poor man may with his wife’s fan, you shall command me, Mrs. Crashaw.” He takes the fan out, and unfurls it.

MRS. CRASHAW.
“Did she send you back for it?”

MILLER.
“I shouldn’t have had the pleasure of arriving with you if she hadn’t.”

MRS. CRASHAW,
laughing, to MRS. CURWEN: “What did you send YOURS back for, my dear?”

MRS. CURWEN,
thrusting out one hand gloved, and the other ungloved: “I didn’t want two rights.”

YOUNG MR. BEMIS.
“Not even women’s rights?”

MRS. CURWEN.
“Oh, so young and so depraved! Are all the young men in Florence so bad?” Surveying her extended arms, which she turns over: “I don’t know that I need have sent him for the other glove. I could have explained to Mrs. Roberts. Perhaps she would have forgiven my coming in one glove.”

MILLER,
looking down at the pretty arms: “If she had seen you without.”

MRS. CURWEN.
“Oh, you were looking!” She rapidly involves her arms in her wrap. Then she suddenly unwraps them, and regards them thoughtfully. “What if he should bring a ten-button instead of an eight! And he’s quite capable of doing it.”

MILLER.
“Are there such things as ten-button gloves?”

MRS. CURWEN.
“You would think there were ten-thousand button gloves if you had them to button.”

MILLER.
“It would depend upon whom I had to button them for.”

MRS. CURWEN.
“For Mrs. Miller, for example.”

MRS. CRASHAW.
“We women are too bad, always sending people back for something. It’s well the men don’t know HOW bad.”

MRS. CURWEN.
“‘Sh! Mr. Miller is listening. And he thought we were perfect. He asks nothing better than to be sent back for his wife’s fan. And he doesn’t say anything even under his breath when she finds she’s forgotten it, and begins, ‘Oh, dearest, my fan’–Mr. Curwen does. But he goes all the same. I hope you have your father in good training, Miss Lawton. You must commence with your father, if you expect your husband to be ‘good.'”

MISS LAWTON.
“Then mine will never behave, for papa is perfectly incorrigible.”

MRS. CURWEN.
“I’m sorry to hear such a bad report of him. Shouldn’t YOU think he would be ‘good,’ Mr. Bemis?”

YOUNG MR. BEMIS.
“I should think he would try.”

MRS. CURWEN.
“A diplomat, as well as a punster already! I must warn Miss Lawton.”

MRS. CRASHAW,
interposing to spare the young people: “What an amusing thing elevator etiquette is! Why should the gentlemen take their hats off? Why don’t you take your hats off in a horse-car?”