The Butterfly House | Page 7

flutter of veils and silk skirts. Mrs. Slade, who was
really superb in her rose silk and black lace, with an artful frill of white
lace at her throat to match her great puff of white hair, remained beside
Mrs. Snyder, whose bow of mirth widened.
"Who is that magnificent creature?" whispered Mrs. Snyder with a gush
of enthusiasm, indicating Alice beside the window.
"She lives here," replied Mrs. Slade rather stupidly. She did not quite
know how to define Alice.

"Lives here in this little place? Not all the year?" rejoined Mrs. Snyder.
"Fairbridge is a very good place to live in all the year," replied Mrs.
Slade rather stiffly. "It is near New York. We have all the advantages
of a great metropolis without the drawbacks. Fairbridge is a most
charming city, and very progressive, yes, very progressive."
Mrs. Slade took it rather hardly that Mrs. Snyder should intimate
anything prejudicial to Fairbridge and especially that it was not good
enough for Alice Mendon, who had been born there, and lived there all
her life except the year she had been in college. If anything, she, Mrs.
Slade, wondered if Alice Mendon were good enough for Fairbridge.
What had she ever done, except to wear handsome costumes and look
handsome and self-possessed? Although she belonged to the Zenith
Club, no power on earth could induce her to discharge the duties
connected herewith, except to pay her part of the expenses, and open
her house for a meeting. She simply would not write a paper upon any
interesting and instructive topic and read it before the club, and she was
not considered gifted. She could not sing like Leila MacDonald and
Mrs. Arthur Wells. She could not play like Mrs. Jack Evarts. She could
not recite like Sally Anderson.
Mrs. Snyder glanced across at Alice, who looked very graceful and
handsome, although also, to a discerning eye, a little sulky, and bored
with a curious, abstracted boredom.
"She is superb," whispered Mrs. Snyder, "yes, simply superb. Why
does she live here, pray?"
"Why, she was born here," replied Mrs. Slade, again stupidly. It was as
if Alice had no more motive power than a flowering bush.
Mrs. Snyder's bow of mirth widened into a laugh. "Well, can't she get
away, even if she was born here?" said she.
However, Mrs. George B. Slade's mind travelled in such a circle that
she was difficult to corner. "Why should she want to move?" said she.

Mrs. Snyder laughed again. "But, granting she should want to move, is
there anything to hinder?" she asked. She wasn't a very clever woman,
and was deciding privately to mimic Mrs. George B. Slade at some
future occasion, and so eke out her scanty remuneration. She did not
think ten dollars and expenses quite enough for such a lecture as hers.
Mrs. Slade looked at her perplexedly. "Why, yes, she could I suppose,"
said she, "but why?"
"What has hindered her before now?"
"Oh, her mother was a helpless invalid, and Alice was the only child,
and she had been in college just a year when her father died, then she
came home and lived with her mother, but her mother has been dead
two years now, and Alice has plenty of money. Her father left a good
deal, and her cousin and aunt live with her. Oh, yes, she could, but why
should she want to leave Fairbridge, and--"
Then some new arrivals approached, and the discussion concerning
Alice Mendon ceased. The ladies came rapidly now. Soon Mrs. Slade's
hall, reception-room, and dining-room, in which a gaily-decked table
was set, were thronged with women whose very skirts seemed full of
important anticipatory stirs and rustles. Mrs. Snyder's curved smile
became set, her eyes absent. She was revolving her lecture in her mind,
making sure that she could repeat it without the assistance of the notes
in her petticoat pocket.
Then a woman rang a little silver bell, and a woman who sat short but
rose to unexpected heights stood up. The phenomenon was amazing,
but all the Fairbridge ladies had seen Miss Bessy Dicky, the secretary
of the Zenith Club, rise before, and no one observed anything
remarkable about it. Only Mrs. Snyder's mouth twitched a little, but she
instantly recovered herself and fixed her absent eyes upon Miss Bessy
Dicky's long, pale face as she began to read the report of the club for
the past year.
She had been reading several minutes, her glasses fixed firmly (one of
her eyes had a cast) and her lean, veinous hands trembling with

excitement, when the door bell rang with a sharp peremptory peal.
There was a little flutter among the ladies. Such a thing had never
happened before. Fairbridge ladies were renowned for punctuality,
especially at a meeting