Laced boots, riding breeches, and army shirt
had gone for a polychrome and trailing tea gown, black satin slippers,
flashing rhinestone rosettes, and silk stockings of a sinful scarlet.
She wore a lace boudoir cap, plenteously beribboned, and her sunburned
nose had been lavishly powdered. She looked now merely like an indulged
matron whose most poignant worry would be a sick Pomeranian or
overnight losses at bridge. She wished to know whether I would have tea
with her. I would.
Tea consisted of bottled beer from the spring house, half a ham, and a
loaf of bread. It should be said that her behaviour toward these
dainties, when they had been assembled, made her seem much less the worn
social leader. There was practically no talk for ten active minutes. A
high-geared camera would have caught everything of value in the scene.
It was only as I decanted a second bottle of beer for the woman that she
seemed to regain consciousness of her surroundings. The spirit of her
first attack upon the food had waned. She did fashion another sandwich
of a rugged pattern, but there was a hint of the dilettante in her work.
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