“All the same, you look solvent, prosperous, up-to-date. What can woman ask more?” said Kate.
“Ask? My dear Kate, you have no idea how hard put to it I am to make ends meet. I am so poor it is a scandal. If my Aunt Althea had not invested her money in this flat, when the house was going up, and left it to me in her will, I should be living in one room of a boarding-house, with a folding-bed. As it is, I ought to let the flat and eke out my ridiculous little income with the proceeds. If I were abroad I might live on it almost in comfort.”
“Nobody understands living abroad better than you do.”
“Of course, since from nineteen to twenty-four I knocked about there with Aunt Althea. But my difficulty, absurd though it may seem for a woman of almost thirty, is that I look hardly old enough to live as a solitary female in the places I know best on the other side. In New York I am panoplied with respectability.”
[Illustration: “MY DEAR KATE, YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD PUT TO IT I AM TO MAKE ENDS MEET. I AM SO POOR IT IS A SCANDAL.”]
“And boredom,” supplemented the frank Mrs. Payne. “It is no fun to live here on the outside of things, where one has been used to the inside. The truth is, you ought to have had a girl--not a boy, who would have been a handful, and most probably a pickle--but a nice little golden-haired angel, with short skirts and long, black-stockinged legs, whom you would have made a vision of picturesqueness in dress.”
“Let us talk of what I have,” said Mrs. West, with a sigh.
“It has just occurred to me that you would make a capital chaperon for some breezy young woman of large means, scant culture, and consuming ambition to see the world. You have position, manners, morals beyond question, and would be a perfect teacher of how to dot one’s i’s in good society.”
“What servitude!” exclaimed her friend, shuddering. “I detest breezy people who are uncertain of themselves. And there is nothing so delusive as temper. She might make my life a burden. How mortifying, too, to have to conduct her along the primrose paths of society in my own town! I should live over a volcano, never knowing when she would break forth.”
“That is better,” said Gwendolyn. “But suppose she fell ill, or flirted, or defied me, away off there. She would be sure to do all three.”