Part 31

It was hard-hearted of me, but all my pleasure in the gleaming white beauties went out, like a bursting bubble. It gets on my nerves to be grateful to Potter three or four times a day!

Nevertheless, when he came back (which he did after we had dressed, and were having tea behind the rain of glittering glass) I had to thank him prettily. He was pleased, but was evidently thinking about something else.

"I didn't get to the Casino, after all," said he. "I met Mrs. Pitchley going out to make a call (she was on her way home, it seems, when we met her) and she offered to turn back if I'd go with her, so I did."

"Now, see here, Potter Parker," broke in Mrs. Ess Kay, "I don't wish you to set up as another of Cora Pitchley's champions. It's all very well for Margaret Taylour to be forever quoting her; and she is fun, but she goes around being original in the wrong way, that nobody admires. That is, she does what she wants and not what other people want her to do. Margaret spends her summers at Blue Bay, and I spend mine at Newport, and I'm not going to have Mrs. Van der Windt down on me, or on my brother, either, if I can help it."

"Thanks for good advice," replied Potter airily. "But may be, when you hear what Mrs. Pitchley had to say to me, you'll change your tune."

Mrs. Ess Kay raised her eyebrows, but her eyes would look curious. "What could Cora Pitchley say that would have any particular effect on me?" she asked.

"She knows for a fact that she isn't to be asked to the Pink Ball on the twenty-third, and that Mrs. Van der Windt herself scratched your name off the list before she sailed for Europe."

Mrs. Ess Kay's face went a dull, ugly red, and she laughed a loud laugh which sounded as if it would be the same colour. "As for Cora, I can quite understand; but I don't believe the woman would have dared to try to exclude me," she said in a quivery voice.

"Why shouldn't she have dared, when you come to think of it?"

"Well, anyhow--she don't dare now."

"No, naturally, she won't dare now. You're as smart as they make 'em, Kath."

Then, for some reason, they both turned and gazed at me with a "thank-goodness-here's-a-floating-spar" sort of look, while Sally examined the grounds in her tea-cup, with that funny little three-cornered smile of hers.

"Was that the thing you thought would change me toward Cora Pitchley?" asked Mrs. Ess Kay.

"Yes, I thought it would give you a sort of fellow feeling."

"It doesn't," said she, shortly, "and nobody but a man could have thought it would. It makes me feel all the more that I don't want to be mixed up with her, for--for Betty's sake."

Potter whistled, with one thumb in a breast pocket. "For the che-ild's sake," he remarked dramatically; and Mrs. Ess Kay looked angry.

"I shan't invite the Pitchleys to my big affair," said she; "the affair I'm going to have for Betty."

"Oh, but you must please not put yourself out for me!" I exclaimed. "I should be so sorry to have you do that."

Potter laughed "Don't you try to rob her of her dearest triumph, Lady Daisy. You're the big gem for the middle of the setting. You're the Kohinoor."

"Potter! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking to her like that," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "But all he means, Betty, is that I shall be very glad to do anything I can to make your visit pleasant; and it will be no trouble at all for me to give an entertainment, you may be quite sure."

She said this as the Queen might say that it didn't matter to her whether there were seventy-five people or seventy-six asked to a garden party; and I realised that I was snubbed; so I said no more.

ABOUT BATHING, A DRESS, AND AN EARL

Mrs. Ess Kay had a headache next morning, and stopped in bed. She couldn't speak or be spoken to, and so we couldn't possibly ask her advice about going to Bailey's Beach for a dip in the sea. Potter--whose proposal it was--said that this was perhaps Providential, as she was almost certain to want me to stay in till I could be taken out officially. "But you don't need to know that," he added.

I looked at Sally, and she laughed; so I knew that I was to go.

"Oh, but what about bathing clothes!" I exclaimed, on a sudden thought. "How stupid of me not to have remembered that I would want them, before I left home, or in New York!"

"I reckon it would have been stupid of us if we hadn't remembered," said Sally. Then she went on,--irrelevantly, it seemed at first: "What day of the month is to-morrow?"

"The twenty-ninth of July," said Potter, promptly, while I was resigning myself, after a slight struggle, to the fact that I had lost track of dates.

"Seem's to me that's somebody's birthday, isn't it?" Sally appeared to address her remark to the ceiling.