Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/65

Rh began to arrive from both Kentucky and Maryland, when they quieted down a little, and became suddenly more circumspect in their conduct. Still there were whispers about the parties.

But Saratoga is a queer place, and the married belles and beaux of certain parvenu cliques play the strangest games during the watering seasons. For instance, they are fond of "euchre;" but a euchre party is generally a married belle's excuse for a supper party to her lover and a few female friends with their lovers. These parties are generally given in the absence of the husbands, but the husbands have to foot the bills, which are often very long, and the occasion of dreadful matrimonial squabbles. Still these people go, year after year, to the watering-places, getting on somehow or other, with their husbands and their lovers, the dear knows how.

There was one lady who glittered throughout a whole season in jewelry that was the admiration and envy of all who beheld it; but the lady remaining unusually long at the Springs, the owner of the jewels posted off to Saratoga to see what had become of her, taking his wife with him, as he did not wish to be seen talking with the lady alone, for fear of exposing her, knowing she had passed all summer as a person of great wealth. The lady treated the jeweler's wife very uncivilly, which she need not have done, for Saratoga at that time was greatly ruled by jewelers, brokers, pillmakers, dressmakers and servants. How the flareup was settled between them, I know not; but the lady was not politic. People never lose anything by being polite, especially to those in whose power they have placed themselves. I do not say