A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill

								

a peep at it up there between the shoulders? I'll hold the doggie.”
To her surprise, Mrs. Sequin found herself removing her gloves, and
adjusting a badly cut lining across a smooth white neck, while the girl
before her, having shifted all responsibility, fell to making love to
the poodle which she cuddled in her arms.
“It's too tight here,” said Mrs. Sequin, pinning and adjusting, “and too
loose there. Have her take up the side seams to the place I have marked,
and lengthen the shoulder seams at least an inch.”
“Thank you so much. It feels heavenly now. You go right up-stairs! You
can take your things off in my room, if you like, just across the hall
from the Doctor's.” And without further ceremony the young hostess went
tripping down the hall, leaving Mrs. Sequin to ascend the stairs alone.
Ascending was one of Mrs. Sequin's chief accomplishments. Twenty-five
years' experience on the social ladder had made her exceedingly
surefooted. Her reward now was in sitting on the top rung and dictating
arbitrarily to all those below. She had acquired a passion for
dictating, for arranging, and setting in order. The crooked seams
which she had just pinned straight gave her a satisfaction that almost
counteracted her annoyance at the informality of her reception.
Once established at the Doctor's bedside, with the nurse detailed to
exercise Fanchonette in the yard below, she gave herself up to the
pleasure of recounting at length her troubles of the past few months.
She enjoyed talking, as a prima donna enjoys singing: she loved to hear
the cadences of her own voice, and to watch the gestures of her jeweled
hands.
“It's an unspeakable relief,” she assured the Doctor, “to actually see
with my own eyes that you aren't a mangled cripple from the terrible
wreck! You can't imagine how frightfully anxious I've been, but then
this whole spring has been a veritable nightmare. Donald and Lee
Dillingham both involved in this unspeakable scrape, Margery on the
verge of nervous prostration, you perhaps fatally injured, and Basil
Sequin too engrossed in his own affairs to give mine a moment's
consideration.”
“Basil has grave responsibilities as president of the People's Bank,
Katherine,” said the Doctor, keeping his fingers between the leaves of
the massive volume which he had regretfully closed at her entrance. “I,
for one, owe him a debt of gratitude for relieving me of all financial
anxiety. Besides you are always thoroughly capable of taking the reins
in a family crisis.”
“Yes, but it's telling on me. I notice it in bridge. I am not the player
I was a year ago. This trial of Lee Dillingham's has been a hideous
strain. Of course, if he had been convicted, I should have compelled
Margery to break her engagement, and that would have complicated things
frightfully. You know his grandfather, the old general, is the largest
stockholder in the People's Bank, and Basil insists that he must not be