egg
market.

There were two or three others within this group. A Mrs. Denison, half
French, and a younger girl called Babe. But Mrs. Drew and Hester were
intimates. They dwaddled daily in one or the other's apartment, usually
lazy and lacy with negligee, lounging about on the mounds of lingerie
pillows over chocolates, cigarettes, novels, Pomeranians, and always the
headache powders, nerve sedatives, or smelling salts, a running line of:
"Lord! I've a head!" "I need a good cry for the blues!" "Talk about a
dark-brown taste!" or, "There was some kick to those cocktails last
night," through their conversation.

KITTY: "Br-r-r! I'm as nervous as a cat to-day."

HESTER: "Naughty, naughty bad doggie to bite muvver's diamond ring."

KITTY: "Leave it to you to land a pear-shaped diamond on your hooks."

HESTER: "He fell for it, just like that!"

KITTY: "You could milk a billiard ball."

HESTER: "I don't see any 'quality of mercy' to spare around your flat."

There were the two years of high school, you see.

"Ed's going out to Geyser Springs next month for the cure. I told him he
could not go without me unless over my dead body, he could not."

"Geyser Springs. That's thirty miles from my home town."

"Your home town? Nighty-night! I thought you was born on the corner of
Forty-second Street and Broadway with a lobster claw in your mouth."

"Demopolis, Ohio."

"What is that--a skin disease?"

"My last relation in the world died out there two years ago. An aunt.
Wouldn't mind some Geyser Springs myself if I could get some of this
stiffness out of my joints."

"Come on! I dare you! May Denison and Chris will come in on it, and Babe
can always find somebody. Make it three or four cars full and let's
motor out. We all need a good boiling, anyways. Wheeler looks about
ready for spontaneous combustion, and I got a twinge in my left little
toe. You on?"

"I am, if he is."

"If he is!' He'd fall for life in an Igorrote village with a ring in his
nose if you wanted it."

And truly enough, it did come about that on a height-of-the-season
evening a highly cosmopolitan party of four couples trooped into the
solid-marble foyer of the Geyser Springs Hotel, motor coated, goggled,
veiled; a whole litter of pigskin and patent-leather bags, hampers,
and hat boxes, two golf bags, two Pomeranians, a bull in spiked collar,
furs, leather coats, monogrammed rugs, thermos bottles, air pillows,
robes, and an _ensemble_ of fourtee