"I say, Carmelita, how do you stand it, really?" Jack Hodge, moustache waxed like a German colonel and a Long Island flower in his buttonhole, was alluding to the blistering heat that filled the narrow stairway of the Drakes' apartment house. Carmelita and he were descending behind the erect back of the Hodge chauffeur who bore Carmelita's two bags. They were on their way to Hedgewood, Long Island, and Lucy's week-end party.
"Oh, you're such a pampered cold-storage plant, Jackie," Carmelita bantered gayly. "You'd just wither away here, I suppose."
"I should, really."
The chauffeur, his burdens deposited, held aside the door of the limousine and Carmelita slipped in and sank into the cool depths. The driver pressed the starter and they glided away from the curb. Should she really have deserted Dudley this way? The poor boy was working so hard. But the next moment Jack had made a silly sally that piqued her into an equally inconsequential reply and she was
