Chapter X

"Rikky-Tikky-Tavy," Gloria said when they were seated in the restaurant, "I hope you meant what you said this morning when you told me I could hire a new maid to take Maggie's place."

Dick looked up from the dinner menu.

"Why?" he asked. "You haven't hired one already, have you?"

Gloria nodded.

"I was going to talk to you about that, to-night, and it slipped my mind," Dick said. "I was going to ask you if you could get along with a laundress and cleaning woman for a while.... Somehow or other it's costing us more to live than I figured it would, and I'm no millionaire, you know."

Gloria drew lines on the tablecloth thoughtfully.

"I've hired an awfully nice-looking Swedish girl," she remarked, after a time. "She says she can do all the work in our house."

Dick gave the waiter the order for dinner.

"How much are you going to pay her?" he asked.

"Eighteen dollars a week," Gloria said bravely.

"Eighteen dollars a week!" repeated Dick. "Great Scott, Gloria, you must have lost your mind! I can't afford to pay a maid $18 a week and board her, besides! It'll cost me $100 a month, easily. I can't do it, honey.... I just haven't got the money!"

"I've told her to start work in the morning, and she's coming," Gloria said. "So we'll have to keep her for a little while."

She raised her limpid eyes. Across the restaurant at a corner table sat Stanley Wayburn. He was looking straight at her.

Wayburn was not alone.

Facing across the table, with her back toward Gloria, sat a woman in a gray suit.

Was it Myra Gail?

... Presently the woman half-turned in her chair. Gloria saw that it was not Myra.

This woman was blond. She seemed strangely familiar, too. Where had Gloria seen her before?

... Then suddenly she remembered. The woman was an actress in Stan's company at the theater ... Sonya Chotek!

The waiter took away the soup plates and served Dick and Gloria with veal cutlets and creamed cauliflower.

Gloria tried to eat.... But she couldn't. There was a lump in her throat, and her eyes were full of hot, jealous tears.

Oh, why did she let Stan Wayburn make her feel this way? ... Why should it make her angry and jealous to see him with another woman?

Gloria gave her plate a little push, and laid down her fork.

"I don't believe I'm hungry after all," she said to Dick. He looked up in surprise.

"Well, you sure are some kid!" he exclaimed. "You drag me 'way down here and order a three-dollar meal ... and now you can't eat it!"

"I know ... I'm sorry," Gloria said.

She sat there miserable while Dick finished his meal in puzzled silence.

"What do you want to do ... go to a movie?" he asked as he helped her on with her coat. Gloria shook her head.

"Let's go home. I'm dead tired," she said. She was, suddenly. Her spirit drooped like spent wings.

She wanted to get out of that hateful restaurant ... away from the sight of Stan and his Sonya Chotek!

She remembered a line of poetry she had heard somewhere ... "Life is a headache in a noisy street."

And so it was! ... It hurt unbearably at times. Now, for instance....

Early the next morning Ranghild Swanson knocked on the kitchen door.

Gloria heard her and ran downstairs to let her in.

"I came to start work, even if it is Sunday," Ranghild said. "But I've been to early church already."

"The better the day the better the deed, Ranghild," Gloria told her laughingly.

The very sight of Ranghild cheered her up. She was so blond and smiling that she seemed to have brought the morning sunshine into the kitchen with her.

And she could cook! Even Dick had to admit that the cherry pie she baked for dinner was as good as any that Maggie had ever made.

"But we can't afford her," he said to Gloria. "You'll have to look around and find some one who'll work for us for about $10 a week. That's my limit, absolutely!"

Gloria didn't answer. She walked around the table to Dick and kissed him with little, light coaxing kisses.

"All right, go ahead and vamp me all you want to!" Dick bantered. "But I mean what I say all the same.... We've just got to cut down on our household expenses. A few more weeks like this last one would land me in the poorhouse!"

The next morning Gloria could hardly wait for Dick to leave for the office. The moment he was out of the house, she ran upstairs and dressed for the street.

A half hour later she was strolling down the avenue.

Behind their plate-glass fronts, the store windows bloomed like gardens, so filled with color were they.

Here a hat perched airily on its stand above a rainbow pile of imported handkerchiefs ... there a beaded bag caught the light, like a bit cut from some rare old tapestry.

Gloria sighed with joy ... she would have that very bag in a few minutes!

She opened the swinging doors of the store and went straight to the business office.

"I am Mrs. Richard Gregory, Junior, and I would like to open a charge account," she said calmly to the hard-eyed Credit manager.

She gave Dick's office address and the name of his bank.

"All right, Mrs. Gregory," the credit man said cordially, after he had looked up Dick's references. "The store is yours. And we'll do everything in our power to please you."

He opened the glass door of his office with a flourish, and bowed Gloria out, quite as if she had been a queen.

This was the only way to shop! ... No bargain-hunting, no counting out change! Simply to ask for what you wanted, and order it sent home!

"I'd like to see afternoon dresses ... something really good," Gloria said to the saleswoman who came toward her across the gown department.

She sat in a comfortable chair while the saleswoman brought in dress after dress. Finally Gloria chose three ... a peacock blue, a black velvet, and an old-rose crêpe.

"I'll try those three on, and see which one suits me best," she said.

They were all wonderfully becoming.

Gloria couldn't make up her mind which one to buy. She was in delicious despair.

"Madam is lovely in any of the gowns!" the saleswoman declared.

She knew her business, that saleswoman!

"Why does not madam take them all?" she asked carelessly. "It is not every day that she will find three so perfect gowns!"

Gloria hesitated.

"But the price!" she breathed.

"Only three hundred dollars for the three of them?" the saleswoman asked in surprise. "But that is nothing! They were twice that much at the beginning of the season! They are a bargain ... those dresses!"

"All right, I'll take them all," Gloria said suddenly. She felt that she simply couldn't go away and leave one of those three wonderful dresses in the shop for some other woman.... They belonged to her! They were made for her! All three of them!

"Of course, I don't really need a hat..." Gloria thought, as she drifted into the millinery department. But down in the bottom of her mind she knew that she was going to buy one.

"I'd like a dress hat ... something with plumes, I think," she said to the white-haired woman who came forward to serve her.

The saleswoman shook her marceled head.

"No plumes," she said smiling, "for so young a face. We must keep you very simple.... Won't you have this chair, please?" She glided away.

Gloria watched her opening and shutting drawers and cupboards.

In a few minutes she came back with a wide-brimmed hat of creamy satin.

"Here's madam's hat," the milliner said, setting it on Gloria's red-gold head. "Simple but smart!"

... The saleswoman was right! It was Gloria's hat. She graced it.

"How much is it?" Gloria asked.

"Fifty-five dollars," the milliner answered in the tone she might have used in saying "two for a nickel."

Fifty-five dollars! Gloria wondered what Dick would say if she paid that much for a hat that hadn't a scrap of trimming on it....

In the end she took it—charged it to Dick.

Next Gloria bought the beaded bag she had seen in the show-window. It was thirty dollars.

"Charge it and send it," she said. She gave her name and address with a feeling of excitement. She had never owned a charge account before in her life.

... They were like wishing rings, these charge accounts. You simply ordered what you wanted ... murmured "Charge it" ... and it was yours!

On her way out of the store Gloria stopped at the toilet-goods counter.

Idly she picked up lipsticks and eyebrow pencils in their silver holders. She needed neither.

Her lips were a natural scarlet. And the black lashes, planted thick around her eyes, gave her a "made-up" look, as it was.

... Still, she could always use face cream and scent. "I want some perfume," she said to the pretty clerk who came to wait upon her. "Not rose or violet. Something spicy and oriental."

Finally she bought two kinds ... mimosa and lotus-flower. After that she bought nail polish, night-cream, bath-powder, and a large wooden bowl of elder-flower soap that would float in the bath-tub.

"Twenty-two dollars," said the saleswoman, adding up the cost of these luxuries.

"Charge it," Gloria said.

The noonday whistles were blowing when Gloria left the store. The street was filled with business girls on their way to lunch, their faces gay and fresh as flowers.

And to think that only a few weeks ago she had been one of them! Why, it had taken her months to earn as much money as she had spent that morning on a few clothes! How long would it take Dick to earn that $400?

Gloria knew that he wasn't half as rich as she had once supposed he was....

Suddenly she was frightened at what she had done. She made up her mind to telephone the store to say that she didn't want the things she had just bought.... No, by jinks, she did want them! And Dick would just have to pay for them, by some hook or crook!

Gloria hurried home and waited for her purchases to be delivered.

Late in the afternoon they came.

She rushed up to her room and tried on the three new dresses ... one after the other, quickly, before Dick should come home.

Ah, they were lovely! And she was lovely in them.... She tried to see herself with Stan Wayburn's eyes as she turned and twisted before the mirror.

Gloria leaned across the dressing-table and smiled at her dazzling self in the glass.

"You darling!" she said.

Then she heard the sound of Dick's latchkey in the door downstairs!

And before she had had time to take off the new blue dress she was trying on, Dick was in the doorway.

"So here you are..." he began and stopped.

His eyes swept the room, from the dresses slung over the foot of his wife's bed to the wrapping paper that littered the rug.

Then he looked at Gloria with a question in his eyes. She was speechless.

"Well, what have you been doing, buying out the town?" he asked.

Gloria smiled. "Hardly that, dearest," she said. "Just a dress or two."

She came toward him swaying like a model in a style-show. Her lips were pursed up for a kiss.

"Kissums sticky mouf," she said babyishly.

Dick kissed her with the utmost gravity.

"Where did you get all these clothes?" he asked.

"From my generous husband.... I charged them to you," Gloria answered. "Now don't be cross, please. I really needed a few things."

Dick frowned.

"But you just bought a new dress last week for your party," he said. "What's the matter with it?"

"Oh, that thing!" Gloria answered, her lips curling. "My old dressmaker made it.... It had no style."

"I thought it was beautiful," Dick said helplessly.

Downstairs Ranghild was striking the Chinese dinner gong.

"You know, Dick," Gloria said after dinner, as they sat before the wood fire in the living-room, "a woman needs more clothes than a man does."

Dick lowered his newspaper and looked at her.

"How much did you spend to-day?" he asked.

"Only a little bit over four hundred dollars," Gloria said. "But wait until you see all the lovely bargains I picked up!" she cried before he had time to answer.

She ran upstairs and dressed herself in the new black velvet dress. Then she put on the cream-colored hat, and dabbed mimosa perfume behind her ears and under her chin.

"Don't I look like a million dollars?" she asked excitedly when she came down, again.

"You sure do," Dick admitted. "But I want to show you something...."

He took a black leather book from his inside coat pocket.

"Oh, don't show me figures, please," Gloria protested. "I don't understand them, and they make my head feel all fuzzy inside...."

"These won't," Dick said. "Look here, I haven't four hundred dollars in my checking account! And I'm paying for some telephone company stock that I'm going to give you for your birthday...."

"Oh, don't! I don't want it. Give me an automobile, instead!" Gloria cried, clasping her hands. "I've just got to have an automobile! May and Myra and all the girls have one!"

"May and Myra have rich husbands," Dick answered. "You've married a poor man, and you'll have to get used to being a poor man's wife.... I'll teach you to drive my roadster, and you can use that to go to your bridge club and lunch parties."

Gloria pouted.

"I don't want that old ark," she said drearily. "I want a little closed car like the one your mother has."

"Give me time, and I'll be able to get things like that for you," Dick replied. "In another ten or fifteen years...."

"Ten or fifteen years!" Gloria broke in. "Why, in ten or fifteen years I'll be an old woman! I won't care about parties and beautiful clothes, then!"

Dick laughed at her.

"You'll be a very attractive woman in your early thirties," he said. "And you'll find that your taste for clothes will be just as strong as it is now ... stronger, perhaps.

"In the meantime," he went on, looking at her gravely, "you'll have to economize a little.... Now, I want you to promise me that you'll never go downtown and run up bills on me again, without asking me about it first.... Will you promise me that?"

Gloria looked him straight in the eye. Slowly she shook her head.

"No," she said clearly. "I won't make any such promise ... for I know I'd break it. I'm going to have clothes.... I won't look like a frump. Don't you want me to be as well-dressed as other women?"

"I can't say that I'm particularly crazy about having a clothes-horse for a wife," Dick answered, picking up his paper. "And there's just one more thing I have to say ... I can't be worried to death about bills and expenses at home, and do anything like my best work downtown every day."

Gloria smoothed down the folds of her black velvet dress thoughtfully.

"Other men seem to buy their wives an occasional dress or two," she remarked with cutting sarcasm. "And I don't notice that they crack under the strain. Good night, I think I'll go to bed. There's no use trying to sit up and talk to you when you're wound up for one of your sermons on economy.... Jiminy, but I wish I were still earning my $25 a week! Then I wouldn't be jawed to death every time I spent a penny!"

She went upstairs, but not to bed.

She spent an hour brushing her hair, polishing her nails, cleaning her face carefully with cold-cream and cold water ... putting her new clothes away in sachet powder.