.

It is doubtful if in all its hothouse garden of women the Hotel Bon
Ton boasted a broken finger nail or that little brash place along the
forefinger that tattles so of potato peeling or asparagus scraping.

The fourteenth-story manicure, steam bath, and beauty parlors saw to
all that. In spite of long bridge table, lobby divan, and table-d'hote
seances, "tea" where the coffee was served with whipped cream and the
tarts built in four tiers and mortared in mocha filling, the Bon Ton
hotel was scarcely more than an average of fourteen pounds overweight.

Forty's silhouette, except for that cruel and irrefutable place where
the throat will wattle, was almost interchangeable with eighteen's.
Indeed, Bon Ton grandmothers with backs and French heels that were
twenty years younger than their throats and bunions, vied with twenty's
profile.

Whistler's kind of mother, full of sweet years that were richer because
she had dwelt in them, but whose eyelids were a little weary, had no
place there.

Mrs. Gronauer, who occupied an outside, southern-exposure suite of
five rooms and three baths, jazzed on the same cabaret floor with her
granddaughters.

Many the Bon Ton afternoon devoted entirely to the possible lack
of length of the new season's skirts or the intricacies of the new
filet-lace patterns.

Fads for the latest personal accoutrements gripped the Bon Ton in
seasonal epidemics.

The permanent wave swept it like a tidal one.

In one winter of afternoons enough colored-silk sweaters were knitted in
the lobby alone to supply an orphan asylum, but didn't.

The beaded bag, cunningly contrived, needleful by needleful, from little
strands of colored-glass caviar, glittered its hour.

Filet lace came then, sheerly, whole yokes of it for crepe-de-Chine
nightgowns and dainty scalloped edges for camisoles.

Mrs. Samstag made six of the nightgowns that winter--three for herself
and three for her daughter. Peach-blowy pink ones with lace yokes that
were scarcely more to the skin than the print of a wave edge running up
sand, and then little frills of pink-satin ribbon, caught up here and
there with the most delightful and unconvincing little blue-satin
rosebuds.

It was bad for her neuralgic eye, the meanderings of the filet pattern,
but she liked the delicate threadiness of the handiwork, and Mr. Latz
liked watching her.

There you have it! Straight through the lacy mesh of the filet to the
heart interest.

Mr. Lou