Page:The principal girl (IA principalgirl00snai).pdf/98

 Still, if he wasn't careful the fetters might easily be riveted. Things had rather shaped that way for twelve months past.

All the same, it behooved him to be wary. The fruit was ripe. A single shake of the branch and it might fall from the tree.

Cinderella had shaken the tree pretty severely. Simple, kind and cheerful she was just the sort of girl you could get on with. Straight as a die, overflowing with life and sympathy, she had the noble faculty of being genuinely interested in all the world and his wife.

Would she come out to lunch?

Oh, yes, any day except Wednesday and Saturday, when she had to play.

So the very next morning they lunched at Dieudonné's, and everything seemed perilously pleasant.

Punctual to the minute! How delightful to have a table in the corner! The restaurant of all others she liked to lunch at; and lark and oyster pudding and Chablis, the fare above all others that she coveted.

Comparisons are odious, but really!

Didn't he think Granny was wonderful? And really quite great in her day. A link with the past, of whom the profession was very proud.

Was Miss Caspar never tired of the theater? Wasn't it an awful grind? Didn't she ever want a night off? When she felt as cheap as she must have been feeling a