Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/14

 which everywhere made life smooth for Gregg Mowbry; she opened the coat closet and carefully arranged his overcoat upon a hanger and took out the evening newspaper he had thrust into the pocket.

Gregg went on to his room which was the first of three large bedchambers described, in the agent's embossed booklet of Number—East Pearson Street, as "Master's Rooms." These were on the east, facing lakeward over a vacant, flat stretch of that newly made promontory just north of the Chicago River and east of the original shore of the lake. A few years ago, indeed, there was only a sandbar upon which that picturesque lake mariner, "Cap" Streeter, grounded his schooner; there he squatted upon the emerging sands and, with an eye to the exceptional advantages of real estate in such a situation, he asserted title to the strip by right of discovery and defended himself with his rifle from behind his driftwood barricades. The old skipper long ago was run out, of course, and, in the manner of extending Chicago lakeward, many thousands of cubic yards of refuse, tin cans, cinders, stone and sand were carted in; upon these was spread loam from the prairie; tall, well-designed, luxurious apartment buildings rose on that land, so that now the captain's "Deestrict of Lake Michigan" has become the newest and most preferred part of the new, ever-spreading city.

No place is more popular with young Chicago couples possessing money and social opportunities; consequently no place is more desirable in the eyes of those people eager to appear to possess both. But besides being fashionable, it is convenient and pleasant, so it is chosen by many without ulterior purposes. Of these was Gregg Mowbry, who was there, as he cheerfully would have been almost anywhere else, because Bill