Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/114

 windows still drawn, but from the bathroom came the sound of water pouring into her tub. Frederika, with a curiously exact intuition, invariably anticipated the rising of her mistress by two or three minutes. The maid entered.

Good afternoon, madame.

Good afternoon, Frederika. Campaspe smiled. She was in the best of humours. . ..

Frederika brought the Times and the morning mail on a tray, and then retired to prepare Campaspe's breakfast. Campaspe picked up the Times and rapidly glanced over the headlines. . . . The Kaiser's state carriages bought by a funeral director caught her eye. How splendid, she turned it over, to be borne to the tomb in such a manner, and she wondered if these royal vehicles resembled the state coaches of Ludwig of Bavaria, rococo, with Cupids and gilt. . . . She read of a blind man at Peekskill who had attended an execution at Sing Sing so that he might sense the feeling of it.. . . She fingered the envelopes on the tray. One of them, in a strange handwriting, she opened. It was a bill from a hat-shop on Fifty-seventh Street. She tore this up slowly. The other letters she tossed unopened on her bed-table. Frederika had returned, and Campaspe sipped her coffee.

Paul had promised to come in at five. Would he bring Harold? She laughed to herself as she recalled the precipitate romance of Bunny and Zimbule. Two babes in the woods, she mused