LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

of picturesque and everything—where do you keep your hairpins?"

      It was part of the enigmatic expression of Minga that with bobbed hair she should demand hairpins with as anguished an intonation as a woman with long tresses. When Sard produced the box, she deftly pinned a pretty lock nearer to her cool deep-set eyes. "It's this rotten high forehead of mine," she explained to her friend now perched in the window-seat watching her. "I'm determined I won't be high-brow if I have to cut my head off to avoid it. Don't you dread, somehow, becoming high-brow? It's so unpopular—the men have always hated it, and now the women do. Do you remember Sara Findlay at college?"

      "Sara Findlay," they breathed the name through gusts of laughter—"Sara Findlay; do you remember her room, books everywhere, and her awful spectacles, and the way she haunted the library and the solemn look she turned on you when you asked her anything? I remember one question we doped out, 'Sara, how do you define the infinite?'"

      "Sara's engaged," said Sard, "married, for all I know; did you hear about it?"

      Minga turned a face of incredulous horror. Marriage as she viewed it was the device of screen actresses and various feature fans to change horizons; when things got a little monotonous or there was a chance of improving finance, one married. "That high-brow wench, not a bit of pep, not a rag of style—to who?"

      "To whom, did you say?" said Sard mischievously. The other girl, falling heavily upon the divan, now buried her curly head in Sard's lap.

      "To who," she repeated carelessly—"I won't say it right; why should I? If the Prince of Wales or Charlie Chaplin said 'to who' for a few weeks, we'd all follow suit. Who invented grammar, anyway?" Minga stretched herself, laughing up into her friend's face.

      "Ouf! Isn't this like the old times? You, the stuck-up grammarian—me, the gypsy vagabond. Woof, what an awful thing it must be to be 'the Judge's daughter' in a little place like 'Willows-on-the-Hudson'."

      Sard laughed a little; her face grew grave. "It's lots of troublous things to be the Judge's daughter, I know that," then swiftly, as if something occurred to her, "Minga, will you do something for me?"

      "Yep," yawned the recumbent Minga; "all right; anything that doesn't interfere with my present position. Sard, do you think my nails are nicer this year?" she held up a very delicately tinted row of little curved shelly fingers. "In spite of golf," said Minga, "I think that's a sweet attractive little hand, don't you?" The fact that Sard had asked her to do something seemed to her unimportant, and she went on—"Notice anything?" She waved a very pretty ring on the slender finger.

      "Minga—you're not," now it was Sard who was really breathless, her brown eyes shimmered with light.

      "Engaged, darrrrrling," drawled Minga. "Yep, to the most idiotic little Willy you can imagine. A perfect lady, Tawny Troop, you know Troop, the big moving-picture man? We're all crazy about Tawny, he's such a fool—and dance—he dances like a bubble on the fountain. Papa Troop is worth oodles, so they say. Mother, the Persian, doesn't know it—yet; Father, the Mede—well, I guess we'd better postpone that!"

      Something careless and contemptuous in Minga's voice kept Sard from asking any of the questions that flew to her lips. She caught the little hand and examined the ring. "Why, it's exquisite," she breathed. "These are brown diamonds, aren't they, and pearls? Oh!" The fairy beauty of the thing moved her.

      "You see, Ducky, another girl picked it out—my predecessor." Minga threw out the word with a curiously mature drawl. She yawned, raised up her head, reached out for a handglass and examined her pretty teeth in the mirror. Suddenly she rose, her figure, slender and reedy, bent backward and did a few striding, strutting steps of a modern dance, humming the while with curious catlike nasal tremolo a popular air.

      "Do you know this step—to the Paradise whistle and ukulele and that new instrument, the Shiverskin, it's just great." Around the room strode Minga, solemnly expounding the simple steps. "You like my ring," hummed Minga, "well, Tawny's first girl picked it out. I saw it on her aristocratic hand and I had to have it; also, you see, I needed Tawny to dance with—he goes my gait—she hated to let him go; Sard, that girl is a Moth, she eats men, eats 'em alive, but I snitched this one," Minga giggled. "Tawny's coming out for your first spring dance at the Club while I'm here, but it's not announced," warned Minga, "so don't talk bassinets."

      It was the old Minga, only, Sard could not keep herself from admitting this; more so, and well, there really need not have been any more of the original Minga. Sard, who was exactly a year older than her friend, felt somehow centuries older. Also she had to confess again as she had confessed to herself before, there was something in Minga that both shamed and hurt, while it fascinated. However, with all the hunger of a lonely girl for a chum, Sard readily overlooked jarring things. She reached out and drew Minga to her, hanging an arm over the thin little shoulder. Minga took it all coolly. "Are you letting yourself get fat, Sard?" she criticised. Then added caressingly, "Poor solemn Sard, we've got to whoop things up for you now I'm here. What? I mean it! Can't we run up a few men and some jazz and stuff on the telephone for to-night? Would Judgie and Aunt Reely care? Who does your jazz this year? We've got an angel band home, three cornets, a paradise whistle and a drum, it's divine—well? Wait till I get hold of that old Dunce," said Minga, "I'll choke all the news out of him. My hat—there comes your father's car around the drive, and I haven't got on evening duds! What do you wear for night-eats? Will Judgie care if I go down as I am?"

      This was Sard's chance. She kept her arm around the restless, pacing little figure. "Minga, will you do something for me? Put on your prettiest dress, that rose-colored one, talk music to Father, let him play his new records for you." Minga made a face, but Sard was insistent. "Get him to tell you about Terence O'Brien—only don't you start the subject, Minga—and—and—and ask him if he is pleased with the new man on the place."

      Then Sard, at a loss just how to drill her impulsive guest, stared at Minga thoughtfully, frowning. "No, don't ask him that," she said. "I've changed my mind, don't ask him that."

      Then said Minga, "I'm to ask him about Terence O'Brien without his knowing it?"

      "Yes, his sister works here."

      "Terence O'Brien," repeated Minga, "who—oh, yes, that fellow that killed the old man, ran away with the money, did it all just like a movie—awfully exciting! My gracious!" Minga was awed.

      Sard nodded. "Hush, his sister is our waitress, and she—oh, it's pretty dreadful to see her. Father thinks he's just a criminal, but don't you see, Minga, he's only a boy, only eighteen."

      Minga looked very cold and decided. The two spots of color stood out high on her little sobered face.

      "But a murderer," said she solemnly. "He must pay the penalty." Minga pronounced the word "peenulty," but her dignity was superb. She was very sure about justice as she was very sure about patriotism. If you did wrong you must not be found out, if you cared for your country you must say so very loudly with strong dramatic effects; the idea of caring for one's country to the extent of having a better kind of women and men live in it had not occurred to Minga. It does not occur to the men and women Mingas of this world. But they are very sure of their "patriotism." They have quite a little patriotic strut and they imagine patriotism to consist in a long hate of some other nation. And that it is based forever and ever on the machinery of killing.

      "Minga," said Sard passionately, "do you and I always do right? Isn't it our ease and good fortune that keep continually pulling us back from very wrong things? How about that time on the bacon-bat up at Divens Lake when we stole the firewood and the corn, did we pay any fines—did the county follow us up? Just a private letter to the faculty and old Pressy and the Dean talking to us and that was all—yet," Sard looked thoughtfully out of the window, "that was crime, stealing and trespassing, but we are so pampered and petted and taken care of that we—well, we don't need to murder."

      "Oh, don't we need to murder? Well, I can tell you, Sard Bogart, that I need to murder Marjorie Atboon every time I look at her." Minga's face was injured. "Her father gave her a new car if she'd stop smoking. Well, Marjorie has the car." Minga paused and remarked drily, "Her bedroom smells queerly—she

Скачать книгу