Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/133

 his books to see why he made such a stir;—thus Marjorie was totaling her life. In order to instance to her-self a single extraordinary event, she had to call up the twenty minutes she spent in an airplane flying over the city and the lake from the hangar just west of Evanston. No wonder Rinderfeld found her so ignorant of the world that he realized it was useless to try to explain what had happened to her; no wonder that the few men, with whom she held anything approaching a conversation, satisfied her when they spoke to her in never so much as half-truths concerning themselves and their world.

It astounded her now suddenly to begin realizing how small and shut in was the world of the daughter and wife of a successful man. Sitting by her window one morning while she watched, fearing the approach of Mr. Stanway or of Russell or some one from Clearedge Street coming in attack upon her home, she counted the delivery wagons which stopped,—the grocer's, the butcher's, the ice van, Marshall Field's, Carson Pirie's, Lord's, a florist's boy, Borden's Creamery, a laundry wagon, one from the cleaner's and a runabout bringing a man to estimate on the decorating to be done soon: eleven bearing to the house materials and service to supplement the service of the three maids and one man established within and to further obviate necessity of effort on the part of her mother and herself. They—Marjorie thought—need not make a single move. As a matter of fact, they frequently telephoned orders and personally purchased some of the articles delivered, but Marjorie could not honestly assign to their activities a higher value than one of furnishing diversion or a feeling of satisfaction at doing something. For she knew that, if they never made a