CORNELIA SHOWS SOME CLASS

“Oh, by the way, Shorty,” says Sadie to me the other mornin’, just as I’m makin’ an early get-away for town.

“Another postscript, eh?” says I. “Well, let it come over speedy.”

“It’s something for Mrs. Purdy-Pell,” says she. “I’d almost forgotten.”

“Is it orderin’ some fancy groceries, or sendin’ out a new laundry artist?” says I. “If it is, why I guess I can——”

“No, no,” says Sadie, givin’ my tie an extra pat and brushin’ some imaginary dust off my coat collar; “it’s about Cousin Cornelia. She’s in town, you know, and neither of the Purdy-Pells can get in to see her before next week on account of their garden party, and Cornelia is staying at a hotel alone, and they’re a little anxious about her. So look her up, won’t you? I told them you would. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Me?” says I. “Why, I’ve been waitin’ for this. Makin’ afternoon calls on weepy old maids is my specialty.”

“There, there!” says Sadie, followin’ me out on the veranda. “Don’t play the martyr! Perhaps Cornelia isn’t the most entertaining person in the world, for she certainly has had her share of trouble; but it isn’t going to hurt you merely to find out how she is situated and ask if you can be of any help to her. You know, if there was anything she could do for us, she would——”

“Oh, sure!” says I. “If I’m ever brought home on a shutter, I shall look for Cornelia to be waitin’ on the mat with a needle and thread, ready to sew mournin’ bands on the help.”

That seems to be Cousin Cornelia’s steady job in life, tendin’ out on the sick and being in at the obsequies. Anyway, she’s been at it ever since we knew her. She’s a cousin of Mr. Purdy-Pell’s, and his branch of the fam’ly, being composed mainly of antiques and chronic invalids, has been shufflin’ off in one way or another for the last three or four years at the rate of about one every six months.

Course, it was kind of sad to see a fam’ly peter out that way; but, as a matter of fact, most of ’em was better off. At first the Purdy-Pells started in to chop all their social dates for three months after each sorrowful event; but when they saw they was being let in for a continuous performance, they sort of detailed Cousin Cornelia to do their heavy mournin’ and had a black edge put on their stationery.

Maybe Cornelia didn’t exactly yearn for the portfolio; but she didn’t have much choice about taking it. She was kind of a hanger-on, Cornelia was, you see, and she was used to going where she was sent. So when word would come that Aunt Mehitabel’s rheumatism was worse and was threatenin’ her heart, that meant a hurry call for Cousin Cornelia. She’d pack a couple of suit cases full of black skirts and white shirtwaists, and off she’d go, not showin’ up again at the Purdy-Pells’ town house until Aunty had been safely planted and the headstone ordered.

You couldn’t say but what she did it thorough, too; for she’d come back wearin’ a long crape veil and lookin’ pasty faced and wore out. Don’t know as I ever saw her when she wa’n’t either just comin’ from where there’d been a funeral, or just startin’ for where there was likely to be one.

So she didn’t cut much of a figure in all the gay doin’s the Purdy-Pells was always mixed up in. And yet she wasn’t such a kiln dried prune as you might expect, after all. Rather a well built party, Cornelia was, with a face that would pass in a crowd, and a sort of longin’ twist to her mouth corners as if she wanted to crack a smile now and then, providin’ the chance would only come her way.

And it wa’n’t hardly a square deal to list her with the U.B.’s as soon as we did; for all this time she was doing the chief mourner act she was engaged to young Durgin. First off it was understood that she was waitin’ for him to settle on whether he was goin’ to be a minister or a doctor, him fiddlin’ round at college, now takin’ one course and then another; but at last he makes up his mind to chuck both propositions and take a hack at the law.

Durgin got there, too, which was more or less of a surprise to all hands, and actually broke in as partner in a good firm. Then it was a case of Durgin waitin’ for Cornelia; for about that time the relations got to droppin’ off in one-two-three order, and she seemed to think that so long as she’d started in on the job of ridin’ in the first carriage, she ought to see it through.

Whether it was foolish of her or not, ain’t worth while debatin’ now. Anyhow, she stuck to it until the last one had cashed in, puttin’ Durgin off from month to month and year to year. Then it turns out that the last of the bunch, Uncle Theodore, had left her a good-sized wad that Purdy-Pell had always supposed was comin’ to him, but which he didn’t grudge to Cornelia a bit.

So there she was, all the lingerin’ ones off her hands, and her sportin’ a bank account of her own. She’s some tired out, though; so, after sendin’ Durgin word that they might as well wait until fall now, she hikes off to some little place in New Hampshire and spends the summer restin’ up. Next she comes down unexpected and hits New York.

In the meantime, though, Durgin has suddenly decided to scratch his entry for that partic’lar Matrimonial Handicap. Not that he’s seriously int’rested in somebody else, but he’s kind of got weary hangin’ around, and he’s seen a few livelier ones than Cornelia, and he feels that somehow him and her have made a great mistake. You know how they’re apt to talk when they get chilly below the ankles? He don’t hand this straight out to Cornelia, mind you, but goes to Mrs. Purdy-Pell and Sadie with the tale, wantin’ to know what he’d better do.

Now I ain’t got any grouch against Durgin. He’s all right, I expect, in his way, more or less of a stiff necked, mealy mouthed chump, I always thought; but they say he’s nice to his old mother, and he’s makin’ good in the law business, and he ain’t bad to look at. The women folks takes his side right off. They say they don’t blame him a bit, and, without stoppin’ to think how Cousin Cornelia is going to feel left alone there on the siding, they get busy pickin’ out new candidates for Durgin to choose from.

Well, that’s the situation when I’m handed this assignment to go and inspect the head of the Purdy-Pells’ obituary department and see if she’s all comfy. Couldn’t have weighed very heavy on my mind; for I don’t think of it until late afternoon, just as I’m startin’ to pull out for home. Then I says to myself that maybe it’ll do just as well if I ring her up on the ’phone at her hotel. She’s in, all right, and I explains over the wire how anxious I am to know if she’s all right, and hopes nobody has tried to kidnap her yet, and asks if there’s anything I can do.

“Why, how kind of you, Mr. McCabe!” says Cornelia. “Yes, I am perfectly well and quite safe here.”

“Good!” says I. And then, seein’ how easy I was gettin’ out of it, I has to pile on the agony a little by addin’, “Ain’t there some way I can be useful, though? No errands you want done, or any place you’d like to be towed around to, eh?”

“Why—why——” says she, hesitatin’. “Oh, but I couldn’t think of troubling you, you know.”

“Why not?” says I, gettin’ reckless. “Just remember that I’d be tickled to death, any time you push the button.”

“We-e-ell,” says she, “we were just wishing, Miss Stover and I, that we did have some gentleman friend who would——”

“Count me in,” says I. “What’s the game? Trip to Woodlawn Cemetery some day, or do you want to be piloted up to Grant’s Tomb?”

No, it wa’n’t either of them festive splurges she had in mind. They wanted a dinner escort for that evenin’, she and Miss Stover. The other lady, she goes on to say, is a school teacher from up Boston way, that she’d made friends with durin’ the summer. Miss Stover was takin’ a year off, for the benefit of her nerves, and before she sailed on her Cook’s trip abroad she thought she’d like to see a little of New York. They’d been tryin’ to knock around some alone, and had got along all right daytimes, but hadn’t dared venture out much at night. So if I wanted to be real generous, and it wouldn’t be too much of a bore, they’d be very thankful if I would——

“In a minute,” says I and, seein’ I was up against it anyhow, I thought I might as well do it cheerful. “I’ll be up about six, eh?”

“Chee!” says Swifty Joe, who always has his ear stretched out on such occasions, “you make a noise like you was fixin’ up a date.”

“What good hearin’ you have, Swifty!” says I. “Some day, though, you’ll strain one of them side flaps of yours. Yes, this is a date, and it’s with two of the sportiest female parties that ever dodged an old ladies’ home.”

Excitin’ proposition, wa’n’t it? I spends the next half-hour battin’ my head to think of some first class food parlor where I could cart a couple like this Boston schoolma’am and Cousin Cornelia without shockin’ ’em. There was the Martha Washington; but I knew I’d be barred there. Also there was some quiet fam’ly hotels I’d heard of up town; but I couldn’t remember exactly what street any of ’em was on.

“Maybe Cornelia will have some plans of her own,” thinks I, as I gets into my silk faced dinner jacket and V-cut vest. “And I hope she ain’t wearin’ more’n two thicknesses of crape veil now.”

Well, soon after six I slides out, hops on one of these shed-as-you-enter surface cars, and rides up to the hotel. I’d been holdin’ down one of the velvet chairs in the ladies’ parlor for near half an hour, and was wonderin’ if Cornelia had run out of black headed pins, or what, when I pipes off a giddy specimen in wistaria costume that drifts in and begins squintin’ around like she was huntin’ for some one. Next thing I knew she’d spotted me and was sailin’ right over.

“Oh, there you are!” she gurgles, holdin’ out her hand.

“Excuse me, lady,” says I, sidesteppin’ behind the chair, “but ain’t you tryin’ to tag the wrong party?”

“Why,” says she, lettin’ out a chuckle, “don’t you know me, Mr. McCabe?”

“Not yet,” says I; “but it looks like I would if——Great snakes!”

And honest, you could hardly have covered my face cavity with a waffle iron when I drops to the fact that it’s Cousin Cornelia. In place of the dismal female I’d been expectin’, here’s a chirky party in vivid regalia that shows class in every line. Oh, it’s a happy days uniform, all right, from the wide brimmed gauze lid with the long heliotrope feather trailin’ over one side, to the lavender kid pumps.

“Gee!” I gasps. “The round is on me, Miss Cornelia. But I wa’n’t lookin’ for you in—in——”

“I know,” says she. “This is the first time I’ve worn colors for years, and I feel so odd. I hope I don’t look too——”

“You look all to the skookum,” says I.

It wa’n’t any jolly, either. There never was any real sharp angles to Cornelia, and now I come to reckon up I couldn’t place her as more’n twenty-six or twenty-seven at the outside. So why shouldn’t she show up fairly well in a Gibson model?

“It’s so good of you to come to our rescue,” says she. “Miss Stover will be down presently. Now, where shall we go to dinner?”

Well, I see in a minute I’ve got to revise my plans; so I begins namin’ over some of the swell grillrooms and cafes.

“Oh, we have been to most of those, all by ourselves,” says Cornelia. “What we would like to see to-night is some real—well, a place where we couldn’t go alone, out somewhere—an automobile resort, for instance.”

“Whe-e-ew!” says I through my front teeth. “Say, Miss Cornie, but you are gettin’ out of the bereft class for fair! I guess it’s comin’ to you, though. Now jest let me get an idea of how far you want to go.”

“Why,” says she, shruggin’ her shoulders,—“how is it you put such things?—the limit, I suppose?”

“Honest?” says I. “Then how about Clover Blossom Inn?”

Heard about that joint, haven’t you? Of course. There’s a lot of joy-ride tank stations strung along Jerome-ave. and the Yonkers road; but when it comes to a genuine tabasco flavored chorus girls’ rest, the Clover Blossom has most of the others lookin’ like playgrounds for little mothers. But Cornie don’t do any dodgin’.

“Fine!” says she. “I’ve read about that inn.” Then she hurries on to plan out the details. I must go over to Times Square and hire a nice looking touring car for the evening. And I mustn’t let Miss Stover know how much it costs; for Cornelia wants to do that part of it by her lonely.

“The dinner we are to go shares on,” says she.

“Couldn’t think of it,” says I. “Let that stand as my blow.”

“No, indeed,” says Cornelia. “We have the money all put aside, and I sha’n’t like it. Here it is, and I want you to be sure you spend the whole of it,” and with that she shoves over a couple of fives.

I couldn’t help grinnin’ as I takes it. Maybe you’ve settled a dinner bill for three and a feed for the shofer at the Clover Blossom; but not with a ten-spot, eh?

And while Cornelia is goin’ back in the elevator after the schoolma’am, I scoots over to get a machine. After convincin’ two or three of them leather capped pirates that I didn’t want to buy their blamed outfits, I fin’lly beats one down to twenty-five and goes back after the ladies.

Miss Stover don’t turn out to be any such star as Cornelia; but she don’t look so much like a suffragette as I expected. She’s plump, and middle aged, and plain dressed; but there’s more or less style to the way she carries herself. Also she has just a suspicion of eye twinkle behind the glasses, which suggests that perhaps some of this programme is due to her.

“All aboard for the Clover Blossom!” says I, handin’ ’em into the tonneau; “that is, as soon as I run in here to the telephone booth.”

It had come to me only at that minute what a shame it was this stunt of Cornelia’s was goin’ to be wasted on an audience that couldn’t appreciate the fine points, and I’d thought of a scheme that might supply the gap. So I calls up an old friend of mine and has a little confab.

By the time we’d crossed the Harlem and had got straightened out on the parkway with our gas lamps lighted, and the moon comin’ up over the trees, and hundreds of other cars whizzin’ along in both directions, Cornelia and her schoolma’am friend was chatterin’ away like a couple of boardin’ school girls. There’s no denyin’ that it does get into your blood, that sort of ridin’. Why, even I begun to feel some frisky!

And look at Cornelia! For years she’d been givin’ directions about where to put the floral wreaths, and listenin’ to wills being read, and all summer long she’d been buried in a little backwoods boardin’ house, where the most excitin’ event of the day was watchin’ the cows come home, or going down for the mail. Can you blame her for workin’ up a cheek flush and rattlin’ off nonsense?

Clover Blossom Inn does look fine and fancy at night, too, with all the colored lights strung around, and the verandas crowded with tables, and the Gypsy orchestra sawin’ away, and new parties landin’ from the limousines every few minutes. Course, I knew they’d run against perfect ladies hittin’ up cocktails and cigarettes in the cloak room, and hear more or less high spiced remarks; but this was what they’d picked out to view.

So I orders the brand of dinner the waiter hints I ought to have,—little necks, okra soup, broiled lobster, guinea hen, and so on, with a large bottle of fizz decoratin’ the silver tub on the side and some sporty lookin’ mineral for me. It don’t make any diff’rence whether you’ve got a wealthy water thirst or not, when you go to one of them tootsy palaces you might just as well name your vintage first as last; for any cheap skates of suds consumers is apt to find that the waiter’s made a mistake and their table has been reserved for someone else.

But if you don’t mind payin’ four prices, and can stand the comp’ny at the adjoinin’ tables, just being part of the picture and seeing it from the inside is almost worth the admission. If there’s any livelier purple spots on the map than these gasolene road houses from eight-thirty p. m. to two-thirty in the mornin’, I’ll let you name ’em.

Cornelia rather shies at the sight of the fat bottle peekin’ out of the cracked ice; but she gets over that feelin’ after Miss Stover has expressed her sentiments.

“Champagne!” says the schoolma’am. “Oh, how perfectly delightful! Do you know, I always have wanted to know how it tasted.”

Say, she knows all about it now. Not that she put away any more’n a lady should,—at the Clover Blossom,—but she had tackled a dry Martini first, and then she kept on tastin’ and tastin’ her glass of fizz, and the waiter keeps fillin’ it up, and that twinkle in her eye develops more and more, and her conversation gets livelier and livelier. So does Cornelia’s. They gets off some real bright things, too. You’d never guess there was so much fun in Cornie, or that she could look so much like a stunner.

She was just leanin’ over to whisper something to me about the peroxide puffed girl at the next table, and I was tryin’ to stand bein’ tickled in the neck by that long feather of hers while I listens, and Miss Stover was snuggled up real chummy on the other side, when I looks up the aisle and sees a little group watchin’ us with their mouths open and their eyebrows up.

Leadin’ the way is Pinckney. Oh, he’d done his part, all right, just as I’d told him over the wire; for right behind him is Durgin, starin’ at Cornelia until he was pop eyed.

But that wa’n’t all. Trust Pinckney to add something. Beyond Durgin is Mrs. Purdy-Pell—and Sadie. Now, I’ve seen Mrs. McCabe when she’s been some jarred; but I don’t know as I ever watched the effect of such a jolt as this. You see, Cornelia’s back was to her, and all Sadie can see is that wistaria lid with the feather danglin’ down my neck.

Sadie don’t indulge in any preliminaries. She marches right along, with her chin in the air, and glues them Irish blue eyes of hers on me in a way I can feel yet. “Well, I must say!” says she.

“Eh?” says I, tryin’ hard to put on a pleased grin. “So Pinckney brought you along too, did he? Lovely evenin’, ain’t it?”

“Why, Sadie?” says Cornelia, jumpin’ up and givin’ ’em a full face view. And you should have seen how that knocks the wind out of Sadie.

“Wha-a-at!” says she. “You?”

“Of course,” says Cornie. “And we’re just having the grandest lark, and——Oh! Why, Durgin! Where in the world did you come from? How jolly!”

“Ain’t it?” says I. “You see, Sadie, I’m carryin’ out instructions.”

Well, the minute she gets wise that it’s all a job that Pinckney and I have put up between us, and discovers that my giddy lookin’ friend is only Cousin Cornelia doin’ the butterfly act, the thunder storm is all over. The waiter shoves up another table, and they plants Durgin next to Cornie, and the festivities takes a new start.

Did Durgin boy forget all about them chilly feet of his? Why, you could almost see the frost startin’ out before he’d said a dozen words, and by the time he’d let the whole effect sink in, he was no nearer contractin’ chilblains than a Zulu with his heels in the campfire.

What pleases me most, though, was the scientific duck I made in the last round. We’d gone clear through the menu, and they was finishin’ up their cordials, when I spots the waiter comin’ with a slip of paper on his tray as long as a pianola roll.

“Hey, Pinckney,” says I, “see what’s comin’ now!”

And when Pinckney reached around and discovers what it is, he digs down for his roll like a true sport, never battin’ an eyelash.

“You would ring in the fam’ly on me, would you,” says I, “when I’m showin’ lady friends the sights?”

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