The Custom of the Country | Page 5

hands trembled in her black brocade lap, and the pulpy curves of her face collapsed as if it were a pricked balloon.
"Oh, Abner," she moaned again, her eyes also on her daughter's door. Mr. Spragg's black eyebrows gathered in an angry frown, but it was evident that his anger was not against his wife.
"What's the good of Oh Abner-ing? Elmer Moffatt's nothing to us--no more'n if we never laid eyes on him."
"No--I know it; but what's he doing here? Did you speak to him?" she faltered.
He slipped his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. "No--I guess Elmer and I are pretty well talked out."
Mrs. Spragg took up her moan. "Don't you tell her you saw him, Abner."
"I'll do as you say; but she may meet him herself."
"Oh, I guess not--not in this new set she's going with! Don't tell her ANYHOW."
He turned away, feeling for one of the cigars which he always carried loose in his pocket; and his wife, rising, stole after him, and laid her hand on his arm.
"He can't do anything to her, can he?"
"Do anything to her?" He swung about furiously. "I'd like to see him touch her--that's all!"

II
Undine's white and gold bedroom, with sea-green panels and old rose carpet, looked along Seventy-second Street toward the leafless tree-tops of the Central Park.
She went to the window, and drawing back its many layers of lace gazed eastward down the long brownstone perspective. Beyond the Park lay Fifth Avenue--and Fifth Avenue was where she wanted to be!
She turned back into the room, and going to her writing-table laid Mrs. Fairford's note before her, and began to study it minutely. She had read in the "Boudoir Chat" of one of the Sunday papers that the smartest women were using the new pigeon-blood notepaper with white ink; and rather against her mother's advice she had ordered a large supply, with her monogram in silver. It was a disappointment, therefore, to find that Mrs. Fairford wrote on the old-fashioned white sheet, without even a monogram--simply her address and telephone number. It gave Undine rather a poor opinion of Mrs. Fairford's social standing, and for a moment she thought with considerable satisfaction of answering the note on her pigeon-blood paper. Then she remembered Mrs. Heeny's emphatic commendation of Mrs. Fairford, and her pen wavered. What if white paper were really newer than pigeon blood? It might be more stylish, anyhow. Well, she didn't care if Mrs. Fairford didn't like red paper--SHE did! And she wasn't going to truckle to any woman who lived in a small house down beyond Park Avenue...
Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise every one by her dash and originality, but she could not help modelling herself on the last person she met, and the confusion of ideals thus produced caused her much perturbation when she had to choose between two courses. She hesitated a moment longer, and then took from the drawer a plain sheet with the hotel address.
It was amusing to write the note in her mother's name--she giggled as she formed the phrase "I shall be happy to permit my daughter to take dinner with you" ("take dinner" seemed more elegant than Mrs. Fairford's "dine")--but when she came to the signature she was met by a new difficulty. Mrs. Fairford had signed herself "Laura Fairford"--just as one school-girl would write to another. But could this be a proper model for Mrs. Spragg? Undine could not tolerate the thought of her mother's abasing herself to a denizen of regions beyond Park Avenue, and she resolutely formed the signature: "Sincerely, Mrs. Abner E. Spragg." Then uncertainty overcame her, and she re-wrote her note and copied Mrs. Fairford's formula: "Yours sincerely, Leota B. Spragg." But this struck her as an odd juxtaposition of formality and freedom, and she made a third attempt: "Yours with love, Leota B. Spragg." This, however, seemed excessive, as the ladies had never met; and after several other experiments she finally decided on a compromise, and ended the note: "Yours sincerely, Mrs. Leota B. Spragg." That might be conventional. Undine reflected, but it was certainly correct. This point settled, she flung open her door, calling imperiously down the passage: "Celeste!" and adding, as the French maid appeared: "I want to look over all my dinner-dresses."
Considering the extent of Miss Spragg's wardrobe her dinner-dresses were not many. She had ordered a number the year before but, vexed at her lack of use for them, had tossed them over impatiently to the maid. Since then, indeed, she and Mrs. Spragg had succumbed to the abstract pleasure of buying two or three more, simply because they were too exquisite and Undine looked too lovely in them; but she had grown tired of these also--tired of seeing them hang unworn in her wardrobe, like