Page:All Kneeling (1928).pdf/32

 froglike orchids, before she permitted herself Gerald Smith's red roses, although she went to the Assemblies with Uncle Johnnie, and to all the débutante parties, she was not just a society butterfly. She wrote poems, and they were sometimes printed in magazines.

It was through Aunt Susannah that she met Talbot Emery Towne, the president of a small refined publishing company. The three dined together at The Cedars. Christabel, turning her face from Aunt Susannah's withered cheeks and watered silk to Mr. Towne's stock and silvery sideburns, felt herself dewy with youth, tender with compassion toward age. Oh, poor old darlings, she thought, gazing at them from wide eyes whose starriness she felt herself, and hearing vaguely something about literary London. Holding your little shields of memories, pretty speeches, pheasant with bread sauce, tawny port, between you and the Dark Archer who draws near you. Her heart swelled with pity as she answered, sweetly, "Yes, Aunt Susannah," or, "Oh, Mr. Towne, really?"