“It would have been a pity to keep you all to myself to-night,” he said.
The weather was raw, with menace of rain or snow, but neither of them thought of the extravagance of a carriage. As she had done upon previous festal occasions, the wife looped up the trailing breadths of velvet, and secured them into a “walking length” of skirt with safety pins. Over her gala attire she cast a voluminous waterproof, buttoned all the way down the front. A bonnet would have deranged her _coiffure_, and she wore, instead, a black Spanish lace scarf knotted under her chin. Slippers and light gloves went in a reticule slung upon her arm.
It lacked five minutes of seven when they alighted from a street-car within a block of the Hitts’ abode. Four carriages were in line before the door, and from these stepped men swathed in long, light ulsters, who assisted to alight and ascend the stone steps apparitions in furred and embroidered opera cloaks that ravished Susie’s wits, in the swift transit of the gorgeous beings from curbstone to the hospitable entrance. A dizzying sensation of unreality, such as one experiences in finding himself unexpectedly upon a great height, seized upon her. Could these people be collected to meet _her_? Humbled, yet elated, she entered the house, and obeying the directions of the footman at the foot of the stairs, mounted to the dressing room.
Four women in such elaborate toilets that our heroine felt forthwith like a crow among birds-of-paradise, glanced carelessly over their shoulders at her without suspending their chatter to one another, and went on talking and shaking out their draperies. Each, in resigning her wraps to the maids in waiting, stepped forth ready for drawing-room parade. Susie retreated to a corner and began hurriedly to disembarrass herself of her waterproof and to let down her skirt. A maid followed her presently.
“Can I help you?” professionally supercilious.
“Thank you. If you would be so good as to take off my boots, I should be obliged.”
The formula was ill-advised and justified the heightened hauteur of the smart Abigail. With pursed mouth and disdainful finger-tips, she removed the evidences that the wearer had trudged over muddy streets to get here, and as gingerly fitted on the dry slippers. The heat in Susie’s cheeks scorched the delicate skin when she found that the time consumed in her preparations had detained her above-stairs after everybody else had gone down. And Kitty had enjoined punctuality! She met her husband in the upper hall with a distressed look.