The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1917-06-01
CHAPTER XII.


What a silly little idiot she'd been
not to have seen the thing for her
self! Shed been, all the while, beat
ing her head against blind walls when
there was a door there waiting to
open of itself when the time came.
Motherhood! There'd be a doctor
and a nurse at first, of course, but
presently they'd go away and she'd
be left with baby. Her own baby !!
She could care for him with her own
hands, feed him-her joy reached an
ecstasy at this-from her own breast.
That life which Rodney led apart
from her, the life into which she had
tried with such ludicrous unsuccess
to effect an entrance, was nothing to
this new life which was to open before
her in a few short months now. Mean
while, she not only must wait
she could well afford to.
That was why she could listen with
that untroubled smile of hers to the
terrible things that Rodney and
James Randolph and Barry Lake and
Jane got into the way of hurling
across her dinner table, and to the
more mildly expressed but equally
alkaline cynicisms of Jimmy Wallace.
Jimmy was dramatic critic on one
of the evening papers as well as bit
of q playwright. He was slim, cool,
smiling, highly sophisticated young
man, who renounced all privileges as
an interpreter Of life in favor of re-
naming an unbiased observer Of it..
He never bothered to speculate about
what you ought to do-he waited to
see what you did.
Well, in the light Of the miraculous
transformation that lay before her,
Rose could listen undaunted to the
tough philosophizings her husband and
Barry Lake delighted in as well as to
the mordant merciless realities with
which Doctor Randolph and Jimmy
Wallace confirmed them. She wasn't
Indifferent to it all.
Sims pretty weird when he gets
going," Eleanor Randolph said to Fred
erica, on the next day after they had
been dining at the Aldriches', 'but that
Barry Lake has a sort of surgical way
of discussing just anything. and his
wife's as bad.
"We never got off women all the
evening. Barry Lake had their his
tory down from the early Egyptians,
and Jim got off a string of patholog-
ical freaks. And then Rodney came
out strong for economic independence,
only with his own queer angle on it,
Of course. He thought it would be a
fine thing, but it wouldn't happen un-
til the men insisted on it. When a
girl wasn't regarded as marriageable
unless she had been trained to trade
or a profession, then things would be-
gin to happen. 1 think he meant it,
too.
"Well, and all the while there sat
Rose, taking it all in with those big
eyes of hers, smiling to herself now
and then; saying things, too, some
times, that were pretty good, though
nobody but Jimmy seemed to under
They've talked before, those two. But
she was no more embarrassed than
as if we'd been talking embroidery
stitches"
So far as externals went, her life,
that spring, was immensely simplified.
The social demands upon her, which
had been so insistent all winter,
stopped almost automatically. The
exception was the Junior League show
in Easter week, for which she put in
quite lot of work She was to have
danced in it.
This is an annual entertainment
by which Chicago sets great store. All
the smartest and best-looking Of the
younger set take part in it, in cos
tunes that would do credit to a chorus
dresser, and as much of Chicago as
is willing and able to pay five dollars
seat for the privilege is welcome
to come and look. Delirious weeks
are spent in rehearsal under a first
class professional director; audience
and performers have an equally good
time, and Charity. as residuary lega-
tee, profits by thousands.
Rose dropped in at rehearsal one
day at the end of a solid two hours
of committee work, found it unexpect-
edly amusing, and made a point, there
after, of attending when she could.
Her interest was heightened, if not
wholly actuated, by some things jim
my Wallace had been telling her late
" about how such things were done
on the real stage.
He had written a musical comedy
Dnce. lived through the production of
t. and had spent Il hard-earned two
recks' vacation trouping with it on