Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/55

 th to the yellow rings beneath his cap frill; he flapped his hands, emitting soft, vague sounds. At such times a wake of admiration bubbled behind him. Delia, who propelled his carriage, which resembled a victoria except for the rearward position of its motor power, pursed her lips consciously and affected not to hear the enraptured comments of the women who passed them.

To the left the trees, set in a smooth green carpet, threw out tiny, polished, early May leaves; graceful, white-coated children dotted the long park. Beyond them the broad blue river twinkled in the sun, the tugs and barges glided down, the yachts strained their white sails against the purple bluffs of the Palisades. To the right towered the long, unbroken rows of brick and stone: story on story of shining windows, draped and muffled in silk and lace; flight after flight of clean granite steps; polite, impersonal, hostile as the monuments in a graveyard.

Immobile ladies glided by on the great pleasure drive like large tinted statues; dressed altogether as the colored pictures in fashion books, holding