Page:More lives than one.djvu/28



“Funny little man—isn’t he?”

“Yes—why?” Mrs. Sayre seemed in no wise offended.

“But fond of you?”

“As whose husband isn’t—if the wife wants him to be?”

“And proud of you?”

“Why shouldn’t he be?”

Rosamond Sayre looked at herself in a mirror.

“He’d be blind if he didn’t see reason to be proud of me,” she said, airily, flicking her cigarette ashes on the rug.

She gave an impression of absolute self-satisfaction. Her beryl eyes flashed with vanity, her great masses of gold-brown hair clustered over her ears and framed a piquant, bewitching face. Her dashing little figure and vivacious gestures betokened self-reliance, as well as self approval.

“Come on, now, Maddy—out with it,” she said; “I must run, in ten minutes, at most. Going to scold me, kid me—or borrow money of me?” She eyed her friend rather sharply.

“Good guesser!” Madeleine cried. “The third time conquers. I’m going to borrow money of you.”

“Broke—haven’t a cent!” and the beryl eyes showed darker glints in them.

“Pooh, don’t come that over me. Harrison will give you a thousand in a minute—if you ask him prettily.”

“But I wouldn’t ask him—for you.” Rosamond smoked calmly on.

“Oh, do now—Rosy, listen.”

And then Madeleine talked and Rosamond, too, low and earnestly, and very steadily, for several minutes.

And Rosamond Sayre said, “All right—I’ll bring you a thousand to-night—at Emmy Gardner’s. Be there by eleven?”

“I think so; or a few moments later.”