Bambi Part 15

"They all look just alike--so many manikins on parade. I suppose there are distinctions in cla.s.s. There must be some shopgirls in this crowd.

Can you distinguish them?" he asked.

"Oh, yes. Not by cut, for the general line is the same for 'Judy O'Grady and the Captain's Lady,' but there is a subtle difference to the feminine eye."

"But you don't look like all the rest of them."

"No, alas, I look distinctly suburban. All I need is a package to make the disguise complete. Oh, Jarvis, do let's hurry and make much red gold, so I can look like these finished things that trip up Fifth Avenue."

"You want to be like them--like those dolls?" he scorned, with a magnificent gesture.

"Yes. I'd like to be so putrid with wealth that I could have rows of wardrobe trunks, with full sets of clothes for every me."

"How many of you are there?"

"Oh, lots. I've never counted myself. Some days I'd dress up like a Broadway siren, some days I'd be a Fifth Avenue lady, or a suburbanite, or a reformer, or a ballet dancer, or a visitor from Boston."

"What would I be doing while you were all these?"

"Oh, you'd be married to all of us. We'd keep you busy."

"The idea is appalling. A harem of misfits."

"We'd be good for your character."

"And death to my work."

"You'd know more about life when you had taken a course of us."

"Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing," he remarked. "Shall we get off and go into the Library?"

"Not to-day. That's part of your day. I want just people and things in mine."

"What are you to-day?" he inquired.

"An houri, a soulless houri," she retorted.

As they approached the University Club, Jarvis recognized it with scorn.

"Monument to the stupidity of modern education, probably full this minute of provincials from Harvard and Yale, all smugly resting in the a.s.surance that they are men of culture."

"I adore the way you demolish worlds," Bambi sparkled up at him.

"Another monument," he remarked, indicating a new church lifting its spires among the money-changers' booths.

"_Hic jacet,_ education and religion. Look at that slim white lady called the Plaza."

"You ought to name her 'Miss New York.'"

"Good, Jarvis. In time you will learn to play with me."

He frowned slightly.

"I know," she added, "I am scheduled under _Interruptions_ in that famous notebook. Unless you play with me occasionally I shall become actively interruptive."

"You are as clever as a squirrel," he said. "Always hiding things and finding them."

"_Hic jacet_ Bambi, along with the other self-important, modern inst.i.tutions," she sighed humbly.

They rattled across the Circle and up Broadway. Bambi was silent, bored with its stupidity. It was not until they turned on to Riverside Drive that her enthusiasm bubbled up again.

"Don't you love rivers?" she exclaimed, as the Hudson sparkled at them in the sun.

"I've never known any," he replied.

"Oh, Mr. Hudson, Mr. Jocelyn," she said, instantly. "I thought, of course, you had met."

"You absurdity!" laughed Jarvis. "What is it that you love about rivers?"

"Oh, their subtlety, I suppose. They look and act so aimless, and they are going somewhere all the time. They are lazy and useful and--wet. I like them."

"Is there anything in the universe you don't like?" Jarvis inquired.

"Yes, but I can't think what it is just now," she answered, and sang "Ships of mine are floating--will they all come home?" so zestfully that an old gentleman in the front seat turned, with a smiling "I hope so, my dear!"

She nodded back at him gayly, to Jarvis's annoyance. As they approached Grant's Tomb, she glanced at him suspiciously. When they got safely by, she sighed with content.

"If you had said anything bromidic about Grant's Tomb, Jarvis Jocelyn, I should have thrown myself off the top of the stage to certain death."

"At times you underestimate me," he replied.

At Claremont, Bambi ordered a most enticing repast, and they were very gay. Everybody seemed gay, too. The sun shone, the early spring air was soft, and a certain gala "stolen sweets" air of Claremont made it seem their most intimate meal.

Everybody smiled at Bambi and she smiled back.

"Nice sort of hookey place, isn't it?" she commented.

"Do you know the man at the next table?"

"Which one?"

"The fat one, who is staring so."

"Oh, no. I thought you meant the one who lifts his gla.s.s to me every time he drinks."

Jarvis pushed back his chair furiously.

"I will smash his head," he said, rising.