chasing each other down her back like rain on a car window pane.

In her tucked white dimity and ankle-ties, her pink sunbonnet and her
tiny, frilled parasol, she was as much out of place in the aesthetic town
as whipped cream on a grapefruit.

She circled the outskirts of the town, and noted the massive and imposing
gateways to the great estates. She knew the grandeur inside, she had been
there. Cubist landscapes, some of them, others were Russian steppes, and
in one instance a magnate was having the ruins of an Egyptian temple
excavated on his grounds, which he had previously with difficulty and at
great expense had buried there.

She did not know what to do about it.

She felt, intuitively, that these men would resent her criticism of their
homes. Yet she couldn't let it go on--this gigantic inutility, this
mammoth lack of practical, efficient management.

Why, the ground sunk in a sunken garden would raise crops enough to feed
an army--and Lord knew how soon they might be needed.

And then she happened to think that reform, like charity should begin at
home, and she decided to start in on Petticoat.

She did.

* * * * *

They were sitting in their home-like Tower of Jewels, and, a bit timidly,