Page:Roads of Destiny (1909).djvu/74

 “One time I says to her: ‘Do I remind you of some deceased relative or friend of your childhood, Mrs. Brown? I’ve noticed you give me a pretty good optical inspection from time to time.’

“‘You have a face,’ she says, ‘exactly like a dear friend of mine—the best friend I ever had. But I like you for yourself, child, too,’ she says.

“And say, Man, what do you suppose she did? Loosened up like a Marcel wave in the surf at Coney. She took me to a swell dressmaker and gave her a la carte to fit me out—money no object. They were rush orders, and madame locked the front door and put the whole force to work.

“Then we moved to—where do you think?—no; guess again—that’s right—the Hotel Bonton. We had a six-room apartment; and it cost $100 a day. I saw the bill. I began to love that old lady.

“And then, Man, when my dresses began to come in—oh, I won’t tell you about ’em! you could n’t understand. And I began to call her Aunt Maggie. You’ve read about Cinderella, of course. Well, what Cinderella said when the prince fitted that 3$1⁄2$ A on her foot was a hard-luck story compared to the things I told myself.

“Then Aunt Maggie says she is going to give me a coming-out banquet in the Bonton that’ll make moving Vans of all the old Dutch families on Fifth Avenue.

“‘I’ve been out before, Aunt Maggie,’ says I. ‘But I’ll come out again. But you know,’ says I, ‘that this is one of the swellest hotels in the city. And you