Winnie Childs | Page 7

please. I must ask my
sister about the dress."
He got the others out, which was not difficult as far as Eileen was
concerned. She could hardly wait to try "First Love."
Rags was determined to ask Miss Rolls if he shouldn't choose a frock
for her. But she said no, she didn't want one. This would have seemed
to settle the matter, and did for Lord Raygan, who sat down beside her,
abandoning further thought of the dryads. Peter, however, returned in
due course to the room of the mirrors, because Miss Child could not be
allowed to get into the "Young Moon" in such weather for nothing.
She was in it when he arrived. And pluck, mingled with excitement,
having had a truly bracing effect on the girls, in the absence of the peer
they were nice to the plebeian. The girl in the "Young Moon," to be
sure, had scarcely anything to say, but she had a peculiarly fascinating
way of not saying it.
By the time Mr. Rolls had bought the "Moon" for his sister, he had
become quite friendly with the other dryads, on the strength of a few
simple jokes about green cheese and blue moons and never having
dreamed he could obtain one by crying for it.
"I was wondering," he said at last, when he was about to go, "whether
you'd care for me to bring you some Balm of Gilead?"
"Balm of Gilead?" all five, even the girl in the "Moon," exclaimed.
"Yes. Stuff for seasickness. Not that you are seasick of course. But the
balm's a good preventive. Did you never hear of it?"
They shook their heads.
"It's the great thing our side of the water. I don't need it myself, but I
know it's all right, because it's making my father a fortune."
"Did he invent it?" inquired Miss Carroll.

"No. But he named it and he sells it. It's the men who name things and
sell things, not the ones who invent them, that get the money. My father
is Peter Rolls, and I---"
"I hope you spell Rolls with an 'e,'" broke in Miss Vedrine. "Else it
would remind me of something I want to forget."
"Something you--But maybe I can guess! What the ship does now?"
"Don't speak of it!" they groaned.
"I won't! Or my name, either, if you'd rather not, especially as only my
sister spells it with an 'e.' I mentioned the name on account of the balm.
The barber has no end of bottles. I'll go and buy you one now. It tastes
good. Back in ten minutes." And he was gone.
"His father must be a chemist," sniffed Miss Devereux, as she
unhooked the "Young Moon."
When Peter returned Miss Child was wearing a robe like an illuminated
cobweb on a background of violets. This was the "Yielding Heart."
Peter had brought a bottle and a clean napkin and five teaspoons. "I got
these things off a dining-room steward," he explained.
"Sounds like a conjurer," murmured the girl who laughed.
"How rude of you!" Miss Devereux scolded in a whisper. "Don't mind
her, Mr. Rolls. She isn't a bit like the rest of us."
Peter had noticed that.
"She's always laughing at everything, and everybody, too," went on
Miss Devereux.
"She's welcome to laugh at me," said Peter. "I enjoy it."
"Ladies don't. She'd never do for a permanence with Mme. Nadine.
Clients wouldn't stand being grinned at by models."

"I don't laugh at people. I laugh at the world," the model defended
herself.
"Why?" inquired Peter, with a straight look at the queer, arresting face.
"To keep it from laughing at me first. And to make it laugh with me--if
I can."
"Do you think you can?"
"I shall try hard--against the biggest odds. And whatever it does to me,
I shan't cry."
"I shouldn't wonder if that wasn't the whole secret of life!" said Peter
Rolls, continuing to look at the face.
Suddenly it flashed a smile at him. "Shouldn't you? Give me the Balm
of Gilead, and the rest would be easy!"
Peter was not stupid as a rule, yet he could not be quite sure what she
meant. If he guessed right, the rest wasn't as easy as she thought. Yet
the words made him wish that he could give the girl who laughed--the
girl who was not to be a "permanence" with Nadine--more than a
teaspoonful of balm.
CHAPTER III
AN ILL WIND
While the storm held, Peter Rolls went several times each dreadful day
to the room of the mirrors and dosed his dryads with Balm of Gilead.
The medicine--or something else--sustained them marvellously. And it
occurred to Peter that they would make a magnificent advertisement, if
there were any way of using them--the kind of