er that tattles so of potato peeling or asparagus scraping.

The fourteenth story, Manicure, Steam-bath, and Beauty Parlors, saw to
all that. In spite of long bridge-table, lobby-divan and _table d'hote_
seances, "tea" where the coffee was served with whipped cream and the
tarts built in four tiers and mortared in mocha filling, the Bon Ton
Hotel was scarcely more than an average of fourteen pounds over-weight.

Forty's silhouette, except for that cruel and irrefutable place where
the throat will wattle, was almost interchangeable with eighteen's.
Indeed, Bon Ton grandmothers with backs and French heels that were
twenty years younger than their throats and bunions, vied with twenty's
profile.

Whistler's kind of mother, full of sweet years that were richer because
she had dwelt in them, but whose eyelids were a little weary, had no
place there.

Mrs. Gronauer, who occupied an outside, southern-exposure suite of five
rooms and three baths, jazz-danced on the same cabaret floor with her
granddaughters.

Fads for the latest personal accoutrements gripped the Bon Ton in
seasonal epidemics.

The permanent wave swept it like a tidal one.

The beaded bag, cunningly contrived, needleful by needleful, from little
colored strands of glass caviar, glittered its hour.

_Filet_ lace came then, sheerly, whole yokes of it for _crepe de Chine_
nightgowns and dainty scalloped edges for camisoles.

Mrs. Samstag made six of the nightgowns that winter, three for herself
and three for her daughter. Peach-blowy pink ones with lace yokes that
were scarcely more to the skin than the print of a wave edge running up
sand, and then little frills of pink satin ribbon, caught up here and
there with the most delightful and unconvincing little blue satin
rosebuds.

It was bad for her neuralgic eye, the meanderings of the _filet_
pattern, but she liked the delicate threadiness of the handiwork, and
Mr. Latz liked watching her.

There you have it! Straight through the lacy mesh of the _filet_ to the
heart interest!

Mr. Louis Latz, who was too short, slightly too stout, and too shy of
likely length of swimming arm ever to have figured in any woman's
inevitable visualization of her ultimate Leander, liked, fascinatedly,
to watch Mrs. Samstag's nicely manicured fingers at work. He liked them
passive, too. Best of all, he would have preferred to feel them between
his own, but that had never been.

Nevertheless, that desire was capable of