Katherine, we must initiate this dear child into the mysteries
of ice cream soda water; and I'm just yearning for some myself,
anyhow."

"Huyler's," said Mrs. Ess Kay to her _mecanicien_, a very young man
with eyes that looked positively ill with intelligence, and a way of
snapping out "all right" when she spoke to him that would make Stan sit
up with surprise if his chauffeur did it.

Sally said that the nicest oasis in the desert of London was an
American place where you can get ice cream soda water; but I had never
had any, and in the burning heat of the New York morning--which flung
itself into the shop like a great wave in spite of fierce electric
fans--I could have purred in pure delight over the piled up, ice-cold
froth in that tall glass. It tasted like frozen velvet flavoured with
strawberries, and I should have loved to be an ostrich or an anaconda
so that the sensation might have lasted longer.

There were no men in the shop, only women, and so pretty that you
wondered if there were a notice posted up over the door forbidding
plain ladies to enter. Two or three had yellow hair, yellower than
mine, and Mrs. Ess Kay said they were actresses who always came back to
New York in summer to wait for Things to turn up, just as chickens come
home to roost; and that they were supposed to be Resting.

I had always thought that a banana made you feel more as if you had
eaten a large, elaborate dinner than any other one thing possibly
could; but I found that an ice cream soda is even more so; and it was
lucky for us that we had another hour's shopping to do (Mrs. Ess Kay
made it an hour and a half because Potter is only her brother) before
luncheon.

The next shop was even more wonderful than the first, and would have
been a great deal more solemn and dignified, and even conventional, if
the same kind of wooden balls hadn't gone tearing round like mad
squirrels in wire cages over the counters, with people's money shut up
inside them. There were very young youths sitting in tall pulpit
things, who caught the balls on the fly in a sporting way, and did
something to them, but I never could see what, and afterwards sent them
back, with the greenback bills inside turned miraculously into silver
and pretty miniature pennies.

When we got to Sherry's Potter was waiting for us, and looking cross. I
think persons with turned up noses show crossness more easily than the
other kind, and Potter had the expression in his eyes t