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"Now I am beginning to get my bearings," she declared as she freshened up a bit for dinner. "I mustn't let myself slump into too great respectability," she grinned at herself in the mirror. Seven o'clock dinner at Elberta Inn was a function in spite of the dried apple pies. Miss Oleander Denton always insisted upon making of it a real dinner party.
Stephen Waller's name and address were given. The house proved to be only three doors from the Elberta Inn, which had been a private residence in former years. By the telephone in the hall near Josie's door hung a new, down-to-date book. She looked for Stephen Waller's name in it. It was not there. She then looked for Chester Hunt's name.
To be sure the transients who occasionally bore down upon them were often northerners or westerners but they did not represent much capital or they would have put up at a first-class hotel. This the boarders who called Elberta Inn home year in and year out well understood and so it was all transients were more or less looked down upon.
Pretty girls walked on the streets with corsage bouquets of the fragrant flowers. "Poor little Polly and Peter! No wonder they are homesick for Atlanta," was Josie's first thought. She found lodgings in a quaint little old hotel called the Elberta Inn.
"I'll show him a thing or two before I get through," she muttered. Before dinner that evening she went out for a walk. She turned to the left from Elberta Inn and sauntered along as though she had no object in life, and from the vacant expression on her face one might think she had no more intelligence than object. Josie had the faculty of appearing dull and stupid.
If I have a friend in to dinner could you serve two of us?" "Sure! I bane smart enough to serve eight if you have knives and forks to go round." Josie made a stiff bow and backed awkwardly down the steps. When the door was closed she turned quickly and literally ran back to the Elberta Inn. She got safely to her room without being seen by any of the aristocratic boarders.
It did not match but it was all good, some thin porcelain with a gold band, some Canton whose blue made Josie homesick for the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop and the little breakfast set, a gift from Mary Louise. The great difference between 126 East Centre and the Elberta Inn lay in the type of boarders.
The reference was written, however, and signed A. Chisholm. With it tightly clasped in a hand upon which Josie had drawn a large white cotton glove, a finishing touch to her costume, the would-be housemaid silently crept from the Elberta Inn and, with an extra dull look in her eyes, rang the front door bell at the Waller house.
Everything in Atlanta seemed to Josie to have something to do with peaches Peachtree Street, West Peachtree Street, Peachtree Terrace, Peachtree Gardens. Then hotels and inns bore the name where they could and others named themselves after famous brands of peaches, such as Elberta.
And there was golden-brown chicken, white rice, cream gravy, hot biscuit, cool sliced tomatoes with sprigs of green parsley, fresh butter, fresh cream, a great slab of heavenly cake, a wicker basket of Elberta peaches, rain-cooled, odorous, delicious, and a pot of steaming coffee. On the edge of the tray was a cluster of rain-washed roses. "No," Alicia doubted, "this is not true: it can't be!
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