Big Poker Site hazard of new fortunes 68

it." "That night we were there," said Miss Mela, "they had to turn the gas down all through one part of it, and the papers said the ladies were awful mad because they couldnt show their diamonds. I dont wonder, if they all had to pay as much for their boxes as we did. We had to pay sixty dollars." She looked at the Marches for their sensation at this expense. March said: "Well, I think I shall take my box by the month, then. It must come cheaper, wholesale." "Oh no, it dont," said the girl, glad to inform him. "The people that own their boxes, and that had to give fifteen or twenty thousand dollars apiece for them, have to pay sixty dollars a night whenever theres a performance, whether they go or not." "Then I should go every night," March said. "Most of the ladies were low neck--" March interposed, "Well, I shouldnt go low-neck." The girl broke into a fondly approving laugh at his drolling. "Oh, I guess you love to train! Us girls wanted to go low neck, too; but father said we shouldnt, and mother said if we did she wouldnt come to the front of the box once. Well, she didnt, anyway. We might just as well a gone low neck. She stayed back the whole time, and when they had that dance--the ballet, you know--she just shut her eyes. Well, Conrad didnt like that part much, either; but us girls and Mrs. Mandel, we brazened it out right in the front of the box. We were about the only ones there that went high neck. Conrad had to wear a swallow-tail; but father hadnt any, and he had to patch out with a white cravat. You couldnt see what he had on in the back o the box, anyway." Mrs. March looked at Miss Dryfoos, who was waving her fan more and more slowly up and down, and who, when she felt herself looked at, returned Mrs. Marchs smile, which she meant to be ingratiating and perhaps sympathetic, with a flash that made her start, and then ran her fierce eyes over Marchs face. "Here comes mother," she said, with a sort of breathlessness, as if speaking her thought aloud, and through the open door the Marches could see the old lady on the stairs. She paused half-way down, and turning, called up: "Coonrod! Coonrod! You bring my shawl down with you." Her daughter Mela called out to her, "Now, mother, Christine ll give it to you for not sending Mike." "Well, I dont know where he is, Mely, child," the mother answered back. "He aint never around when hes wanted, and when he aint, it seems like a body couldnt git shet of him, nohow." "Well, you ought to ring for him!" cried Miss Mela, enjoying the joke. Her mother came in with a slow step; her head shook slightly as she looked about the room, perhaps from nervousness, perhaps from a touch of palsy. In either case the fact had a pathos which Mrs. March confessed in the affection with which she took her hard, dry, large, old hand when she was introduced to her, and in the sincerity which she put into the hope that she was well. "Im just middlin," Mrs. Dryfoos replied. "I aint never so well, nowadays. I tell fawther I dont believe it agrees with me very well here, but he says Ill git used to it. Hes away now, out at Moffitt," she said to March, and wavered on foot a moment before she sank into a chair. She was a tall woman, who had been a beautiful girl, and her gray hair had a memory of blondeness in it like Lindaus, March noticed. She wore a simple silk gown, of a Quakerly gray, and she held a handkerchief folded square, as it had come from the laundress. Something like the Sabbath quiet of a little wooden meeting-house in thick Western woods expressed itself to him from her presence. "Laws, mother!" said Miss Mela; "what you got that old thing on for? If Id a known youd a come down in that!" "Coonrod said it was all right, Mely," said her mother. Miss Mela explained to the Marches: "Mother was raised among the Dunkards, and she thinks its wicked to wear anything but a gray silk even for dress-up." "You haint never heared o the Dunkards, I reckon," the old woman said to Mrs. March. "Some folks calls em the Beardy Men, because they dont never shave; and they wash

Hazard Of New Fortunes page 67        Hazard Of New Fortunes page 69