Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/128

 memory of her when one went away was with it as background. It adjoined her bedroom and looked out on Beacon Street, though Beacon Street, providentially, could not reciprocate. Its furniture was shiny black, like patent leather, and decorated with enormous scarlet birds of a genus never known on land or sea (Peg herself had painted them). The walls were scarlet, and about and over them trophies and knicknacks of every description were spilled. Here the perplexed eye beheld photographs, dance programs, pen-and-ink drawings, banners, a battered football, a small blue satin slipper, an oar carved with a thousand initials, a dollar bill in a frame, a tin dipper, the rim of a derby hat, a rubber doll, several empty champagne bottles, a ukulele without strings, a remnant of scarlet bathing suit, an Army Officer's cap—all hung willy-nilly on the wall, as though Peg had stood in the doorway and flung them and they had stuck where they hit. It was a museum of memories, each separate exhibit with its history. Peg adored it, and frequently avowed her intention of living exclusively in it, and never for an instant leaving it, from the age of fifty until she died, at which time the variety was to be stripped from place and buried with her.

In this room she reclined now in a wicker chaise longue, while Jock, who had not been admitted before, made a tour of inspection.

"Sit down!" Peg directed." I asked you up here to talk, not to stand speechless and pop-eyed."

"Can you blame me?" said Jock. "I never saw such a place." He took a chair. "Well, what'll we talk about?"

"You. Why won't you let yourself be yourself, Jock?"

"Why, I do! I am!"