II
PRIDE AND JOY
An unfortunate tradesman on Broadway within a few blocks of Eighty-eighth Street looked resentfully after the copious figure of Mrs. Loamford striding uptown with a swinging gait eloquent of indignation.
“If she wanted bird’s eye maple,” he informed his assistant, “why didn’t she say so? All she said was frame the damn diploma, so I framed the damn diploma. She didn’t say what wood—left it to me—used my judgment —then listen to the way she raised hell——”
Similar in tone if not in vocabulary were the reflections of Mrs. Loamford. Why had the idiot framed Dorothy’s diploma from Miss Blagden’s School for Girls in mission when she had specifically—she could remember her very words—told him that she wanted it done in bird’s eye maple? It would look all out of place in Dorothy’s room. What was the use of getting a girl an expensive set of bird’s eye maple furniture as a graduation present and then hanging up a diploma from Miss Blagden’s School—and that meant something—in mission? Dumb. That’s what he was. Dumb.
Her anger simmered down when she saw Dorothy in the newly furnished room, arranging her gift-books on the bird’s eye maple shelf which had been especially
built in as a sort of memorial for her school days. Dorothy certainly was a pretty girl and a graceful vision as she smoothed out the irregular rows of volumes. She might be even prettier when she filled out a little here and
[13]
