Then they went, with a flutter of silk stockings and twinkling slipper
buckles, and a medley of shrieked goodbys.
Warble and Petticoat reached home.
"Howja like 'em?" he asked.
"I'm so hungry," she wailed.
"Oh, Warble, you ought to be more careful about eating in public. It isn't
done. Watch Iva Payne--she doesn't."
"Oh, Bill--" Warble began to cry. "I want to go back to the restaurant--"
"No, no--now, Cream Puff, I didn't mean to lambaste you. But they're a
smart crowd--"
Warble let two tears rest, glistening, in her lower eyelashes, rolled up
her eyes, pulled down the corners of her hibiscus flower mouth, and waited
to be kissed.
She was.
* * * * *
Up in Bill's bedroom. Gray silken walls, smoked pearl furniture,
a built-in English bed, with gray draperies.
Through a cloth of silver portiere, a bathroom done in gray rough stone.
Oxidized silver plumbing exposure.
No pictures on the walls, save one--a barbaric Russian panel by
Larrovitch.
At the windows, layers of gauze, chiffon, silk--all gray.
A great circular divan was somewhere about, and as he sank down upon it
and drew her with him into its engulfing down, he patched up the quarrel.
"They took to you," he said, "you went like hot cakes!"
It was an unfortunate allusion, and Warble, smiling with an engaging
smile, wheedled, "Pleathe, pleathe--"
"No," Petticoat said, inexorably, "if you eat all the time you'll get to
look like that soprano.
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