directions,
Cornelia and her schoolma'am friend was chatterin' away like a couple of
boardin' school girls. There's no denyin' that it does get into your
blood, that sort of ridin'. Why, even I begun to feel some frisky!

And look at Cornelia! For years she'd been givin' directions about where
to put the floral wreaths, and listenin' to wills being read, and all
summer long she'd been buried in a little backwoods boardin' house, where
the most excitin' event of the day was watchin' the cows come home, or
going down for the mail. Can you blame her for workin' up a cheek flush
and rattlin' off nonsense?

Clover Blossom Inn does look fine and fancy at night, too, with all the
colored lights strung around, and the verandas crowded with tables, and
the Gypsy orchestra sawin' away, and new parties landin' from the
limousines every few minutes. Course, I knew they'd run against perfect
ladies hittin' up cocktails and cigarettes in the cloak room, and hear
more or less high spiced remarks; but this was what they'd picked out to
view.

So I orders the brand of dinner the waiter hints I ought to have,--little
necks, okra soup, broiled lobster, guinea hen, and so on, with a large
bottle of fizz decoratin' the silver tub on the side and some sporty
lookin' mineral for me. It don't make any diff'rence whether you've got a
wealthy water thirst or not, when you go to one of them tootsy palaces
you might just as well name your vintage first as last; for any cheap
skates of suds consumers is apt to find that the waiter's made a mistake
and their table has been reserved for someone else.

But if you don't mind payin' four prices, and can stand the comp'ny at
the adjoinin' tables, just being part of the picture and seeing it from
the inside is almost worth the admission. If there's any livelier purple
spots on the map than these gasolene road houses from eight-thirty P. M.
to two-thirty in the mornin', I'll let you name 'em.

Cornelia rather shies at the sight of the fat bottle peekin' out of the
cracked ice; but she gets over that feelin' after Miss Stover has
expressed her sentiments.

"Champagne!" says the schoolma'am. "Oh, how perfectly delightful! Do you
know, I always have wanted to know how it tasted."

Say, she knows all about it now. Not that she put away any more'n a lady
should,--at the Clover Blossom,--but she had tackled a dry Martini first,
and then she kept on tastin' and tastin' her glass of fizz, and the
waiter k