"
"If you want to know what you look like," said Mannie sternly,
"you look like one of the waiter girls at Childs's -- that's
what you look like."
"And your crown!" exclaimed Mabel, "and your kimono. Ain't you
going to wear your kimono?"
She hastened to the cabinet and produced the cloak of black
velvet and spangles, and the silver-gilt crown.
"No, I am not!" declared Vera. She wore the frightened look of a
mutinous child. "I -- I look so -- foolish in them!"
Such heresy caused Mannie to gasp aloud; "You look grand in
them," he protested; "don't she, Mabel?"
"Sure she does," assented that lady.
"And your junk?" demanded Mannie, referring to the jade necklace
and the gold- plated bracelets. His eyes opened in sympathy.
"You haven't pawned them, have you?"
"Pawned them?" laughed Vera; "I couldn't get anything on them!"
As the only masculine point of view available, she appealed to
Mannie wistfully. "Don't you like me better this way, Mannie?"
she begged.
But that critic protested violently.
"Not a bit like it," he cried. "Now, in the gold tiara and the
spangled opera cloak," he differentiated, "you look like a
picture postal card! You got Lotta Faust's blue skirt back to
Levey's. But not in the white goods!" He shook his head sadly,
firmly. "You look, now, like you was made up for a May-day
picnic in the Bronx, and they'd picked on you to be Queen of the
May."
Mabel carried the much-admired opera cloak to Vera, and held it
out, tempting her.
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