Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/73



OBLE had driven Mr. Driggs downtown in the sleigh, tucked in under a glossy black bearskin, and already the softly falling snow had blurred the footprints down the front path and the tracks of the sleigh runners. Mrs. Driggs rocked by the window, made sleepy by the warm room and the quivering web of snowflakes, yawning great, gasping, moaning yawns that squeezed the tears out of her eyes. Magnificent even in negligée, she wore a dressing gown of bright purple panne velvet, with coffee-colored lace falling down the front like a brook in spring foaming and cascading down a mountain. On the floor Hoagland lay stretched on his stomach, languidly pasting in his scrapbook pictures from embossed sheets of moss roses, forget-me-nots, little scrolls saying "Remember Me," the heads of St. Bernard dogs, and wrens building nests in old shoes. On the floor about him were a yellow box of Velvets, nearly empty, a strewing of bits of oiled paper from the Velvets he had eaten, several apple cores, turning brown, and two apples from each of which one small bite had been taken. Myrtle, the "girl," was trundling the carpet sweeper about the dining room, pausing now and then to hurl a friendly insult at the shouting canary: "Shut up, squawk-box;