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Who Cares? a story of adolescence by Cosmo Hamilton
page 57 of 344 (16%)


THE ROUND-ABOUT

I


Alice Palgrave's partner had dealt, and having gone three in "no
trumps" and found seven to the ace, king, queen in hearts lying
before her in dummy, she wore a smile of beatific satisfaction. So
also did Alice--for two reasons. The deal obviously spelled money,
and Vere Millet could be trusted to get every trick out of it. There
were four bridge tables fully occupied in the charming drawing-room,
and as she caught the hostess' eye and smiled, she felt just a
little bit like a fairy godmother in having surrounded Joan with so
many of the smartest members of the younger set barely three weeks
after her astonishing arrival in a city in which she had only one
friend.

Alice didn't blind herself to the fact that in order to gamble, most
of the girls in the room would go, without the smallest
discrimination, to anybody's house; but there were others,--notably
Mrs. Alan Hosack, Mrs. Cooper Jekyll and Enid Ouchterlony,--whose
pride it was to draw a hard, relentless line between themselves and
every one, however wealthy, who did not belong to families of the
same, or almost the same, unquestionable standing as their own.
Their presence in the little house in East Sixty-seventh Street gave
it, they were well aware, a most enviable cachet and placed Joan
safely within the inner circle of New York society--the democratic
royal inclosure. It was something to have achieved so soon--little
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