Page:Twilight Sleep (Grosset).pdf/116

RV 108 many of us, it seems. You tell me I'm the third lady to call on you today! You know well enough, Arthur—" she brushed the name in lightly, on the extreme tip of her smile—"that the opinion of people like you still counts in New York, even in these times. Imagine what your mother would have felt at the idea of Fanny and Bee figuring in all the daily headlines, with reporters and photographers in a queue on the doorstep! I'm glad she hasn't lived to see it."

She knew that Wyant's facile irony always melted before an emotional appeal, especially if made in his mother's name. He blinked unsteadily, and flung away the "Looker-on."

"You're dead right: they're a pack of fools. There are no standards left. I'll do what I can; I'll telephone to Grant to look in on his way home this evening I say, Pauline: what's the truth of it all, anyhow? If I'm to give him a talking to I ought to know." His eyes again lit up with curiosity.

"Truth of it? There isn't any—it's the silliest mare's-nest! Why, I'm going to Dawnside for a rest-cure next month, while Dexter's tarpon-fishing, The Mahatma is worlds above all this tattle—it's for the Lindons I'm anxious, not him."

The paper thrown aside by Wyant had dropped to the Roor, face upward at a full-page picture—the picture. Pauline, on her way out, mechanically yielded to her instinct for universal tidying, and bent