Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/380

 Having made up her mind she sought Anne's room at once. Anne, in a cheap cotton kimono, was braiding her hair for the night. The sleeves of the kimono were short and showed her thin white arms. Amy had on a blanket wrapper. Her hair was in metal curlers. She looked old and tired, and now and then she coughed.

Anne got into bed and drew the covers up to her chin. "I'm so cold, I believe there are icicles on my eyebrows. Amy, my idea of heaven is a place where it is as hot as—Hades."

"I don't see where you get such ideas. Ethel and I don't talk that way. We don't even think that way, Anne."

"Maybe when I am as old as you" Anne began, and was startled at the look on Amy's face.

"I'm not old!" Amy said passionately. "Anne, I haven't lived at all, and I'm only thirty."

Anne stared at her. "Oh, my darling, I didn't mean"

"Of course you didn't. And it was silly of me to say such a thing. Anne, I'm cold. I'm going to sit on the foot of your bed and wrap up while I talk to you."

Anne's bed had four pineapple posts and a pink canopy. The governor of a state had slept in that bed for years. He was one of the Merryman grandfathers. Amy could have bought mountains of 374