but with the same essential standards and sympathies, and it was necessary, therefore, to pray very earnestly and persuasively to have the child of an obscure (and truculent) Chicago physician receive any special favors. Janice Jennings might seem, at first glance—a glance staggered by her beaded lashes and her[100] mauve cheeks and her cerise mouth—an unlikely instrument of Providence, but Miss Ada was well aware that fathers, on earth and in heaven, moved in mysterious ways their wonders to perform, and she saw Glen off for the Bella Vista with misty eyes and a pounding heart. [100] [101] CHAPTER IX Glen Darrow dines for the first time in her life and tells her hostesses her opinion of Peter Parker of Pasadena; later confides to her sleepless pillow that she doesn’t like being touched. OLD Mrs. Jennings, who welcomed her granddaughter’s guest very cordially, wore an orchid dinner gown and an orchid complexion. Her face had at once an oddly tense and expectant look overlaid by a doll-like blankness. Janice, catching Glen’s hastily averted glance, whispered an explanation at the first opportunity. “Grammer’s had her face lifted twice. That’s what gives her the hard-finish. Kalsomined, just like a wall. Isn’t it a scream? But if the poor old girl gets a kick out of it—” she shrugged with a good-natured tolerance. “My child, you’re a landscape! Good-looking dress. Didn’t get it here?” “It was a present from Miss Ada.” “Well, what do you know about that? You’d expect that poor old White Leghorn to choose polka dots and baby ribbon, wouldn’t you. But at that, I can see she’s a good egg.” [102]“She has been a wonderful friend to me,” Glen flushed loyally, following her hostesses into the glare and blare of the big dining room. There was a merciless blaze of light and on a shallow stage a jazz orchestra was committing musical crimes. [102] As soon as they were seated Janice leaned across the table and pointed frankly at one of the musicians. “Pipe the bird with the big horn—the one with a permanent wave in it? That’s Edward Harrington Du Val—you know—they gave him the gate at Harvard and papa pulled the heavy father stuff,—‘Not another penny, sir!’—you know the line, but the kid’s called his bluff and proved he can pay for his own hooch and gardenias. Don’t you love it? I’m
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