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It was pleasant for the indolent Kedzie to have the harness taken from her. She yawned and stretched and rubbed her sides when her corsets were off, and when her things were whisked from sight and she was only Kedzie Thropp alone in a nightgown she was more nearly glad than she had been for ever so long. She flung her hair loose and ran about the room.
We'll tell him how we found you here; and you tell him you were holding a prayer-meeting. You didn't want to be disturbed, so you didn't have even a servant around all alone together at this hour." Then a new, strange voice spoke in. "Who said they were alone?" The four turned to see Mrs. Thropp filling the hall doorway, and Adna's head back of her shoulder.
Will your mother call on me and Kedzie, or will she look for us to call on her first?" "My God!" thought Jim. "What say?" said Mrs. Thropp. Jim floundered and threshed. He had never before realized what his mother's famous pride might mean. She had always been only mother to him, devoted, tender, patient, forgiving, amusing, sympathetic, anxious, flattered by his least attention.
Thropp's cheapness of appearance better than she did. A woman may grow shoddy and careless, but she rarely grows oblivious of her uncomeliness. She will rather cherish it as the final cruelty of circumstances. Mrs. Thropp was keenly alive to the effect it would have on Dyckman if Kedzie introduced her and Adna as the encumbrances on her beauty.
Adna warned his women folk that "she" was about to go up, but they were not prepared for that swift vertical leap toward the clouds. Another floor, and Mrs. Thropp would have screamed. The altitude affected her. Then the thing stopped, and the boy led them down a corridor so long that Adna said, "Looks like we'd be stranded a hundred miles from nowheres." The boy turned in at a door at last.
Adna, hearing the door-bell and Dyckman's entrance, returned to the living-room from the bathroom, where he had taken refuge. He stood in the hall now behind the puzzled Dyckman. There was a dreadful silence for a moment. Jim spoke, shyly: "Hello, Anita! How are you?" "Hello, Jim!" Kedzie stammered. "This is " "I'm the janitor's wife," said Mrs. Thropp.
Beautiful Kedzie Thropp, Western Society Belle, Deserts Her Wealthy Parents at Biltmore and Vanishes Kedzie felt the world blow up about her. Her name was in the New York papers the second morning of her first visit! Her father and mother were called wealthy! She was a society belle! Who could ever hereafter deny these ideal splendors, now that there had been a piece in the paper about them?
"Well, we didn't live together very long, and I was perfectly miser'ble every minute." "You poor little honey child!" said Mrs. Thropp, who felt her lamb coming back to her, and even Adna reached over and squeezed her hand and rubbed her knuckles with his rough thumb uncomfortably.
"I see," said Ferriday. "Miss Anita Adair ring Mrs. Gilfoyle's bell. All right, my angel, at seven. Run along." He kissed her, and she was ice-cold. But then women were often like that before Ferriday's genius. The things we are ashamed of are an acid test of our souls. Kedzie Thropp was constantly improving the quality of her disgusts.
Jim called the lawyer Beattie some hard old Anglo-Saxon names, and told him that if he were a little bigger he would give him the beating that was coming to him. Then he turned to Kedzie's father. "Mr. Thropp," he pleaded, "you and I have always got along all right. You know I've tried to do the right thing by your daughter. I'm ready to now.
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