Middletown transcript., 1915-12-25
CHAPTER XIV.
The Message From New York.

The Message From New York.
It was good to be homel Gail won
dered that she could ever have Deen
content away from the loving shelter
Of her many, many friends. She had
grown world weary in all the raise
gayety q New York! She was dis
llusioned! She was blase. She was
tired Of frivolity; and she immedi
ately Planned or enthusiastically
agreed to take part in series of gay
eties whish would have made an aver
age hardWorl1ing man anticipate them
with an elready broken constitution.
The house was full of them, morn
Ing. noon and night; young girls, Sc
date and jolly, and all Of them excit-
edly glad that Gail was among them
again; and young men, in all the de-
grees from social butterflies to plod-
ding business pluggers, equally glad.
Good, comfortable home folks these,
who were deiiciously nice to the state
~ black-haired Arly, and voted her
a tremendous beauty, and stood slight
iy In awe Of her. The half cynical
Arly. viewing them critically, found in
them one note Of interesting novelty
a certain general clean-hearted whole
soneness. and. being a seeker after
the unusual, and vastly appreciative,
she deliberately cultivated them; fat
tering, the poys, buS pot so much as to
make the other giLs nGe eher To
the girls she made herself even more
sttTsctive, because she liked their
better. She complinented them indi-
vidually on the point of perfection for
which each girl most prided herself;
she told them that they were infinitely
more clever than the women of New
York. and better looking, in general;
for the New York women were mostly
clothes and makeup; and, above all,
she envied them their truer livesl
No group of young people could re-
sist such careful work as that, espe-
cially when performed by a young
woman so adroit ind so attractive,
and so well gowned; so they lost their
awkwardness with ller, which removed
any sense of discimfort Gail might
have felt, which was the aim to be ac-
complished In those first few days
Gail was the happiest of all creatures,
In spite of the fact that the local pa
pers had carried politer echo of that
despicable slave story. At nights,
however, beginning with the second
one, when the girls had retired to the
mutual runway of their adjoining
suites, the conversation would turn
something like this:
Let's see. this is the seventeenth,
isn't it?" thus Arly.
"Yes; Tuesday" concentratedly Sc
lecting a chocolate, the box of which
bore New York name.
MRS. MatsOn's ice skating ball is
tonight" A sidelong glance at the
busy Gail. '45he always has such orig
inal affairs"
Doesn't she!" Gail draws her san.
daled feet up under her and stretches
down her pink negligee, so that she
looks like d stiff statue in tinted
ivory
"And such interesting people. That
new artist is certain to be there
What's his name? Oh. yes, Vlodow
could adore him."
You're a mere verbal adorer,'
laughs Gail, studying anxiously over
the problem of whether she wants
another piece of chocolate or not. AL.
lison had sent such good ones. "Vlo-
dow eats garlic"
That's why adore him, from a
distance. OF course all the nice regu.
lar fellows will be there-Dick, Rod
ley and Ted, and Houston, and Oh
oh! forgot to write Gerald" and with
a swift passing kiss somewhere be
tween Calls ear and her chin, she hur-
ries into her own dressing room, with
1.S>~~.~c~~~~N~-~~ ~N~-o>oS>~~-N.r'-'>--"