CROWNED HEADS

Katie had never been more surprised in her life than when the serious
young man with the brown eyes and the Charles Dana Gibson profile
spirited her away from his friend and Genevieve. Till that moment she
had looked on herself as playing a sort of 'villager and retainer' part
to the brown-eyed young man's hero and Genevieve's heroine. She knew
she was not pretty, though somebody (unidentified) had once said that
she had nice eyes; whereas Genevieve was notoriously a beauty,
incessantly pestered, so report had it, by musical comedy managers to
go on the stage.

Genevieve was tall and blonde, a destroyer of masculine peace of mind.
She said 'harf' and 'rahther', and might easily have been taken for an
English duchess instead of a cloak-model at Macey's. You would have
said, in short, that, in the matter of personable young men, Genevieve
would have swept the board. Yet, here was this one deliberately
selecting her, Katie, for his companion. It was almost a miracle.

He had managed it with the utmost dexterity at the merry-go-round. With
winning politeness he had assisted Genevieve on her wooden steed, and
then, as the machinery began to work, had grasped Katie's arm and led
her at a rapid walk out into the sunlight. Katie's last glimpse of
Genevieve had been the sight of her amazed and offended face as it
whizzed round the corner, while the steam melodeon drowned protests
with a spirited plunge into 'Alexander's Ragtime Band'.

Katie felt shy. This young man was a perfect stranger. It was true she
had had a formal introduction to him, but only from Genevieve, who had
scraped acquaintance with him exactly two minutes previously. It had
happened on the ferry-boat on the way to Palisades Park. Genevieve's
bright eye, roving among the throng on the lower deck, had singled out
this young man and his companion as suitable cavaliers for the
expedition. The young man pleased her, and his friend, with the broken
nose and the face like a good-natured bulldog, was obviously suitable
for Katie.

Etiquette is not rigid on New York ferry-boats. Without fuss or delay
she proceeded to make their acquaintance--to Katie's concern, for she
could never get used to Genevieve's short way with strangers. The quiet
life she had led had made her almost prudish, and there were times when
Genevieve's conduct shocked her. Of course, she knew there was no harm
in Genevieve. As the latter herself had once put it, 'The fell