Ptomaine Street | Page 7

Herford so pathetically dubbed
"the short and simple flannels of the poor."
Yes, she was now a Petticoat--one of the aristocratic Cotton-Petticoats,
washable, to be sure, but a dressy Frenchy Petticoat, and as such she
must take her place on the family clothesline.
She drifted from oriel window to casement, and on to a great
becurtained and becushioned bay, and looked out on the outlook.
She saw gardens like the Tuileries and Tuilerums, soft, shining pools,
little skittering fountains, marble Cupids and gay-tinted flowers. This
was the scene for her to look down upon and live up to.
"I mustn't! I mustn't! I'm nervous this afternoon! Am I sick?...... Good
Lord, I hope it isn't that! Not now! I'd hate it--I'd be scared to death!
Some day--but, please, kind Fate, not now! I don't want to go down
now with ptomaine poisoning! Not till after I've had my dinner! I'm
going out for a walk."
When Warble had plodded along for six hours, she had pretty well done
up the town.

Ptomaine Street, which took its name from her husband's own
residence, was a wide, leafy avenue with a double row of fine old trees
on each side. They were Lebbek trees, and the whole arrangement was
patterned after the avenue which Josephine built for Napoleon, out to
the Mena House.
She passed the homes of the most respectable citizens. Often they were
set back from the road, and the box hedges or tall iron fences prevented
her from seeing the houses. But she saw enough and sped on to the
more interesting business and shopping section of Butterfly Center.
She passed Ariel Inn, the hotel being like a Swiss Chalet, perched on
some convenient rocks that rose to a height above street level. A few
fairly nimble chamois were leaping over these rocks and Warble heard
a fairy-like chime of bells as afternoon tea was announced.
A man in an artist's smock sauntered across the street. A palette on one
thumb, he scratched his chin with the other. A hearse, its long box
filled with somebody, crawled down the block. A dainty Sedan with a
woman's idle face at its window wafted by. From a Greek Temple came
the sound of Interpretative Dancing, and the applause of perfunctory
hands.
She wanted to elope. Her own ideas of utility, efficiency, and economy
were being shattered--broken in pieces like a potter's vessel. Her sense
of proportion, her instinct for relative values, her abhorrence of waste
motion, her inborn system and method, all were swept away as a thief
in the night. Could she reform this giddy whirl? Could she bring chaos
out of cosmos? Was her own ego sufficient to egg her on in her chosen
work?
She haed her doots.
She maundered down the street on one side--back on the other.
Dudie's Drug-store was like unto a Turkish Mosque. Minaret and
pinnaret, battlement and shuttle-door, it was a perfect drug-store, nobly
planned. The long flight of steps leading up to its ptortal was a

masterpiece in the step line.
Inside, the Soda Pagoda was a joy of temple bells and soft, sweet
drinks, while at the prescription counter, the line formed on the right, to
get Dr. Petticoat's prescriptions filled for their ptomaines.
A Moldavian Incense Shop was the barber's; a half-timbered house sold
English-built clothes; a brick affair of Georgian influences and splendid
lines, housed the hardware needed by the Butterflies, and the milliner's
was a replica of the pyramid of Cestus.
The bank was the Vatican, with Swiss guards in the doorway.
Perpetual waste motion! In all the town not one building that connoted
to Warble the apotheosis of efficiency shown by the King Alfred
tossing cakes in the window of Bairns' Restaurant. Not a dozen
buildings that even suggested use in addition to their beauty.
And the street was cluttered with trees in tubs, window boxes, sudden
little fountains or statues; gilded wicker birdcages on tall poles--songs
issuing therefrom.
Arbors, covered with pink Dorothy Perkinses, here and there by the
curbside. And, worst of all, people sitting idle in the arbors. Idle!
She wouldn't have cared so much, if the people had been busy--even
one of them. She fought herself. "I must be wrong. It can't be as silly as
it looks! It can't!"
She went home and found Petticoat waiting for her.
"Like the burg, eh? Great stuff, what? Not an eyesore inside the city
wall. Good work, I'll megaphone."
Warble sat down in an easy-going chair--so easy, it slid across the room
with her, and collided with a life-sized Chinese lady of yellow stone.
"Yes," Warble responded, "it's very uninteresting."

CHAPTER V
Goldwin Leathersham was a great Captain of Industry. In fact, he put
the dust in industry, or, at least, he took it out of it. He