Page:Good Sports (1919).djvu/195

186 a looking-glass the words will come out as clear as day. Come on over here to this mirror, and let's see what else the blotter has got to say."

"I'd like to know this girl," Thomas Hornby exclaimed, as they puzzled the lines out together. "Just listen here to her idea of heaven." He read Lucretia's words out loud, almost tenderly. Twould be great fun doing things for her, eh, Mother?" he exclaimed boyishly. "Most women are so everlastingly used to luxury; most of the women I've met since I came home, that is. American girls seem to expect so confoundedly much when they marry. My difficulty is not that I'm financially unable to provide it, but such everlasting assumption seems to take all the joy of giving and making happy away from me."

He went back to his chair and sat down. "Take this little Larrabee girl I lunched with this noon," he went on, "nice girl, fine people—her family; but I'll wager she was carrying around on her person about five thousand dollars' worth of jewelry! And so used to costly food that we had to hunt the menu through three times to find anything she really wanted. Only twenty-one, and telling me she must hurry off to consult about a French lady's-maid for herself—her perfect