Treasure and Trouble Therewith Part 13

"That must be it." Chrystie raised her eyes and looked at the cornice, her red lips parted, her glance becoming animated. "Yes, of course, that's it--I'm dull. Why didn't I see it myself? You've put it before me in letters of fire--I'm dreadfully dull."

"What would you like to do?"

"Have some good times, lots of them. There aren't enough of them this way. We can't go to the theater too often or we'd get used to it, and I can't get the Barlows to come up here every week, they have such crowds of engagements."

She sighed at the memory of the Barlows' superior advantages and the sigh sounded like a groan of reproach in Lorry's ears. Innocently, unconsciously, unaccusingly, Chrystie was rubbing in the failure of her stewards.h.i.+p. She combed at the ends of her hair, her eyes blind to its burnished brightness.

"Would you like to have a party here?" she said in a solemn voice.

Chrystie's glance was diverted from the cornice, wide open and astonished.

"A party here, in _this_ house?"

"Yes, it's big enough. There's plenty of room and we can afford it."

"But, Lorry"--the proposition was so startling that she could hardly believe it--"a _real_ party?"

"Any kind of a party you want. We might have several. We could begin with a dinner; Fong can cook anything."

Chrystie, the idea accepted and held in dazzled contemplation, suddenly saw a flaw.

"But where would we get any men?"

"We know some and we could find some more."

"You talk as if you could find them scattered about on the ground the way they found nuggets in '49. Let's count our nuggets." She held up the spread fingers of a large white hand, bending one down with each name.

"There's Charlie Crowder if he can get off, and his friend Robinson in the express company, and Roy Barlow, whom I know so well I could recite him in my sleep, and Mrs. Kirkham's grandnephew who looks like a child--and--and--good gracious, Lorry, is that _all_ our nuggets?"

"We could have some of those young men whose mothers knew ours."

"You said you didn't like them."

"I know I did, but if you're going to give parties you have to have people you don't like to fill up."

"Um," Chrystie pondered, "I suppose you must. Oh, there's Marquis de Lafayette."

"Yes," said Lorry, "I thought of him."

Chrystie's eyes, bright with question, rested on her sister.

"You can't exactly call him a nugget."

"Why not?"

"Because he doesn't s.h.i.+ne, darling."

This explanation appeared to strike its maker as a consummate witticism.

She fell back on the bed in spasms of laughter.

Lorry looked annoyed.

"He's nicer than any of the others, I think."

"Of course he is, but he's been buried too long in the soil; he needs polis.h.i.+ng." She rolled over on the bed in her laughter.

Lorry began to braid her hair, her face grave.

"I don't think things like that matter a bit, and I don't see at all what you're laughing at."

"I'm laughing at Marquis de Lafayette. I can't help it--something about his hands and his manners. They're so ponderously polite; maybe it's from waiting on table in the students' boarding house."

"I never knew you were a sn.o.b before, Chrystie."

"I guess I am. Isn't it awful? Oh, dear, I've laughed so much I've got a pain. It's perfectly true, I'm a sn.o.b. I like my nuggets all smooth and s.h.i.+ny with no k.n.o.bs or bits of earth clinging to them."

Lorry's hair was done and she rose and approached her sister.

"You've spoiled my bed. Get off it and go."

But Chrystie would not move. With her face red and the tears of her laughter standing in her eyes she gazed at the serious one.

"Lorry, darling, you look so sweet in that wrapper with your hair slicked back. You look like somebody I know. Who is it? Oh, of course, the Blessed Damozel, leaning on the bar of Heaven, only it's the bar of the bed."

"Don't be silly, Chrystie. Get up."

"Never till I have your solemn, eternal, sworn-to promise."

"What promise?"

"To give that party."

"You have it--I said I'd do it and I will."

"And get nuggets for it?"

"Yes."

"All right, I'll go."

She sat up, rosy, disheveled, her hair hanging in a tousled mop from its loosened pins. Catching Lorry's hand, she squeezed it, looking up at her like an affectionate, drowsy child.

"Dear little Blessed Damozel, I love you a lot even though you are high-minded and think I'm a sn.o.b."

She had been in her room for some minutes, Lorry already in bed with a light at her elbow and a book in her hand, when she reappeared in the doorway. The pins were gone from her hair and it lay in a yellow tangle on her shoulders, bare and milk-white. Looking at her sister with round, shocked eyes, she said:

"It's just come to me how awful it is that two young, beautiful and aristocratic ladies should have to hunt so hard for nuggets. It's tragic, Lorry. It's _scandalous_," and she disappeared.

Lorry couldn't read after that. She put out the light and made plans in the dark.