The Rich Mrs Burgoyne | Page 5

laying in the drawer," said
Lizzie, "I thought I'd put a couple of irons on and press them out."
"If you have time, I wish you would," Mrs. Carew said, touching the
frosted top of an angel-cake with a tentative finger. "I may have to play
to-night, Celia," she went on, to her own cook, "but you girls can
manage everything, can't you? Dinner really doesn't matter-- scrambled
eggs and baked potatoes, something like that, and you'll have to serve it
on the side porch."
"Oh, yes'm, we'll manage!" Celia assured her confidently. "We'll clear
up here pretty soon, and then there's nothing but the sandwiches to do."
Mrs. Carew went on her way comforted. Celia was not a fancy cook,
she reflected, passing through the darkened dining-room, where the

long table had been already set with a shining cloth, and where silver
and glass gleamed in the darkness, but Celia was reliable. And for a
woman with three children, a large house, and but one other maid,
Celia was a treasure.
She telephoned the grocer, her eyes roving critically over the hall as she
did so. The buttercups, in a great bowl on the table, were already
dropping their varnished yellow leaves; Annie must brush those up the
very last thing.
"So far, so good!" said Mrs. Carew, straightening the rug at the door
with a small heel and dropping wearily into a porch rocker. "There
must be one thousand things I ought to be doing," she said, resting her
head and shutting her eyes.
It was a warm, delicious afternoon. The little California town lay asleep
under a haze of golden sunshine. The Carews' pretty house, with its
lawn and garden, was almost the last on River Street, and stood on the
slope of a hill that commanded all Santa Paloma Valley. Below it, the
wide tree-shaded street descended between other unfenced lawns and
other handsome homes.
This was the aristocratic part of the town. The Willard Whites'
immense colonial mansion was here; and the Whites, rich, handsome,
childless, clever, and nearing the forties, were quite the most prominent
people of Santa Paloma. The Wayne Adamses, charming, extravagant
young people, lived near; and the Parker Lloyds, who were suspected
of hiding rather serious money troubles under their reckless hospitality
and unfailing gaiety, were just across the street. On River Street, too,
lived dignified, aristocratic old Mrs. Apostleman and nervous, timid
Anne Pratt and her brother Walter, whose gloomy, stately old mansion
was one of the finest in town. Up at the end of the street were the
Carews, and the shabby comfortable home of Dr. and Mrs. Brown, and
the neglected white cottage where Barry Valentine and his little son
Billy and a studious young Japanese servant led a rather shiftless
existence. And although there were other pretty streets in town, and
other pleasant well-to- do women who were members of church and
club, River Street was unquestionably THE street, and its residents

unquestionably THE people of Santa Paloma.
Beyond these homes lay the business part of the town, the railway
station, and post-office, the library, and the women's clubhouse, with its
red geraniums, red-tiled roof, and plaster arches.
And beyond again were blocks of business buildings, handsome and
modern, with metal-sheathed elevators, and tiled vestibules, and heavy,
plate-glass windows on the street. There was a drug store quite modern
enough to be facing upon Forty-second Street and Broadway, instead of
the tree-shaded peace of Santa Paloma's main street. At its cool and
glittering fountain indeed, a hundred drinks could be mixed of which
Broadway never even heard. And on Broadway, three thousand miles
away, the women who shopped were buying the same boxed powders,
the same bottled toilet waters, the same patented soaps and brushes and
candies that were to be found here. And in the immense grocery store
nearby there were beautifully spacious departments worthy of any great
city, devoted to rare fruits, and coffees and teas, and every pickle that
ever came in a glass bottle, and every little spiced fish that ever came in
a gay tin. A white-clad young man "demonstrated" a cake-mixer, a
blue-clad young woman "demonstrated" jelly-powders.
Nearby were the one or two big dry-goods stores, with lovely gowns in
their windows, and milliners' shops, with French hats in their smart
Paris boxes--there was even a very tiny, very elegant little shop where
pastes and powders and shampooing were the attraction; a shop that
had a French name "et Cie" over the door.
In short, there were modern women, and rich women, in Santa Paloma,
as these things unmistakably indicated. Where sixty years ago there had
been but a lonely outpost on a Spanish sheep-ranch, and where thirty
years after that there was only a "general store" at a crossroads, now
every luxury