Her conversation was also timely: "I don't care," she would say, "I should worry and lose my figure"--and again: "I can't make my feet behave when I hear that tune. Oh, baby!"
Her finger-nails were too long and ornate, polished to a pink and unnatural fever. Her clothes were too tight, too stylish, too vivid, her eyes too roguish, her smile too coy. She was almost pitifully overemphasized from head to foot.
The other girl was obviously a more subtle personality. She was an exquisitely dressed Jewess with dark hair and a lovely milky pallor. She seemed shy and vague, and these two qualities accentuated a rather delicate charm that floated about her. Her family were "Episcopalians," owned three smart women's shops along Fifth Avenue, and lived in a magnificent apartment on Riverside Drive. It seemed to Dick, after a few moments, that she was attempting to imitate Gloria--he wondered that people invariably chose inimitable people to imitate.
"We had the most hectic time!" Muriel was exclaiming enthusiastically. "There was a crazy woman behind us on the bus. She was absitively, posolutely nutty! She kept talking to herself about something she'd like to do to somebody or something. I was petrified, but Gloria simply wouldn't get off.
Mrs. Gilbert opened her mouth, properly awed.
"Really?"
"Oh, she was crazy. But we should worry, she didn't hurt us. Ugly! Gracious! The man across from us said her face ought to be on a night-nurse in a home for the blind, and we all howled, naturally, so the man tried to pick us up."
Presently Gloria emerged from her bedroom and in unison every eye turned on her. The two girls receded into a shadowy background, unperceived, unmissed.
"We've been talking about you," said Dick quickly, "--your mother and I."
"Well," said Gloria.
A pause--Muriel turned to Dick.
"You're a great writer, aren't you?"
"I'm a writer," he confessed sheepishly.
"I always say," said Muriel earnestly, "that if I ever had time to write down all my experiences it'd make a wonderful book."
Rachael giggled sympathetically; Richard Caramel's bow was almost stately. Muriel continued: "But I don't see how you can sit down and do it. And poetry! Lordy, I can't make two lines rhyme. Well, I should worry!"
Richard Caramel with difficulty restrained a shout of laughter. Gloria was chewing an amazing gum-drop and staring moodily out the window. Mrs. Gilbert cleared her throat and beamed.
"But you see," she said in a sort of universal exposition, "you're not an ancient soul--like Richard."