"
Something is naturally expected of the wife of John Jay Queerington. I
told her expressly that Friday was her day, I even telephoned to
remind her, and here it is four o'clock, and people beginning to come,
and she off playing tennis!"
They were waiting in the twilight of the Queerington parlor, that
plain, stiff, old maid of a parlor that had sprung completely
furnished from the brain of a decorator some two decades before and
never blinked an eyelid since. It was a room with which no one had
ever taken liberties. Hattie had once petulantly remarked that her
father would as soon have moved a tooth from his lower to his upper
jaw, as to have moved an ornament or picture from the parlor to the
second floor.
Mrs. Ivy, the lady addressed, smiled tolerantly. It was one of Mrs.
Ivy's most irritating characteristics that she was always tolerant of
other people's annoyances. She was blond and plump, and wore a
modified toga and a crystallized smile.
"Ah! Mrs. Sequin," she purred, "our little bride is a child of Nature.
Sweetness and light! We must not expect too much of her at first. My
Gerald says she's like a wild little waterfall dancing in the sun,
undammed by conventions.
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