"Yes. The one we saw in Baltimore."
"Merry, you're precious!"
"I thought you'd like it."
"Oh, I do. And I'm going to call her 'Sarah.'" She turned to Crispin, "That's my real name, but nobody ever gives it to me. This doll is dressed like Queen Victoria. She's fat and short and wears a little cap. I fell in love with her at first sight. She's just what I'd like to be when I grow old. But I shan't be like that at all. I shall be thin and all strung up with beads and things, and my cheeks will be red, and my hair touched up." She stopped from sheer failure of invention.
"But you won't have to look like that, will you?"
"Yes, I shall. You watch the old women of our set. They've got a youth-complex. Can you see mother wearing a cap when her hair gets thin? Or having flat-heeled slippers? But I'll bet that deep down in her heart she envies my Sarah-doll."
Crispin laughed a little, and then, as she talked to Meriweather, turned his attention to the people around him. This was, for him, the second act of the play. And the setting! He had never in his life seen such silver and glass and china. The strip of Italian embroidery down the center of the table might have belonged in a palace—the flower-holder was a silver pheasant, and smaller silver pheasants, placed at intervals down the table, held the salt. The grandfather in the red coat had had the pheasants made by an English silversmith, and they were brought out only on grand occasions.
Like Hildegarde, Crispin wondered at the effect of extravagance. Carew had, he knew, lost his money.
