The Challenge of the North by James B. Hendryx
page 19 of 129 (14%)
page 19 of 129 (14%)
|
Let it go."
Hedin smiled. "You can wear it to-night, all right, but you must promise me to send it down the first thing Monday morning for the alteration. "I will bring it to the house this afternoon." A sudden caprice seized her. "Why, I think I'll wear it!" she answered. "Just help me on with it, Oskar. And thank you so much for helping me select it. Here comes Mr. Wentworth, now. I wonder whether he will like it. I'm crazy about it. What kind of a marten did you say it is? Everybody will be asking me, and I want to be able to tell them what my own coat is." "Baum marten," answered Hedin stiffly, heartily wishing the coat safe in its accustomed place. In vain he regretted the wild impulse that had led him to substitute the sable coat for the marten. The impulse had come when the girl told him that Mrs. Orcutt was to be one of the theatre party. The plan had flashed upon him with overwhelming brilliance. He knew that Jean would in all probability never notice that the coat was not a marten. And he knew that Mrs. Orcutt most certainly would, for McNabb had once publicly compared it with her coat, much to the New York coat's detriment and Mrs. Orcutt's humiliation. It was not altogether loyalty for his employer that led him to plot the woman an uncomfortable evening, for he owed her a grudge on his own account. Ever since the coming of Wentworth, whom she had taken under her special patronage, Hedin had been studiously omitted from her scheme of social activities--and Jean McNabb had been as studiously included. He knew that McNabb was leaving town to be |
|