Some of them indeed she
could buffalo right on the spot, for she hadn't lived in Europe and such
places all them years for nothing. So, camping in a miserable rented
shack that never cost a penny over seventy thousand dollars, with only
thirty-eight rooms and no proper space for the servants, they set to
work building their present marble palace--there's inside and outside
pictures of it in a magazine somewhere round here--bigger than the state
insane asylum and very tasty and expensive, with hand-painted ceilings
and pergolas and cafes and hot and cold water and everything.
"It was then I first see Ellabelle after all the years, and I want to
tell you she was impressive. She looked like the descendant of a long
line of ancestry or something and she spoke as good as any reciter you
ever heard in a hall. Last time I had seen her she was still forgetting
about the r's--she'd say: 'Oh, there-urr you ah!' thus showing she was
at least half Iowa in breed--but nothing like that now. She could give
the English cards and spades and beat them at their own game. Her face
looked a little bit overmassaged and she was having trouble keeping her
hips down, and wore a patent chin-squeezer nights, and her hair couldn't
be trusted to itself long at a time; but she knew how to dress and she'd
learned decency in the use of the diamond except when it was really
proper to break out all over with 'em.
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