laughter had somewhat subsided, Mrs. Joel, her plump white cheeks red with open anger, cried out in a furious voice:
“I don’t agree with you!… I don’t agree with you at all…. And I must say it seems very stupid of you, Ida, to take such a childish point of view.”
“Childish!” Mrs. Pierce cried in a challenging tone, “you’re the one who’s childish!… If I did a thing like that to my girls—if I for one moment thought I had a right to take such liberties as that with other people, I’d feel like a fool!… Why, Mother,” she cried in a strong protesting tone, “wake up!… What kind of a world do you live in, anyway?… Whatever gave you the notion that you have a right to do things like that to other people—and all because you’re fortunate enough to be able to keep servants and pay them wages…. Wake up! Wake up!” she cried in a tone of almost furious indignation, “—You’re not living in the Dark Ages, Mother…. Slavery has been abolished!… This is the twentieth century!… Why, it’s absurd!” she cried scornfully, and with two spots of angry colour in her cheeks—“the most arrogant and high-handed thing I ever heard in all my life—The whole thing’s preposterous—I only hope that no one hears about it.”
“If you feel that way about it,” Mrs. Joel began in a voice choked with fury—and at this moment Joel came to the rescue and saved what really threatened to develop into an ugly, open, painful quarrel between the two women—
“Oh, but Granny,” he whispered—“I’m sure the girls don’t mind a bit!… And they look much nicer—and much cooler—without their hair than when they had it—I’m sure they feel that way about it, too.”
“Well,” Mrs. Joel began, still very angry but somewhat placated by her grandson’s tactful intervention—“I’m glad to see that someone still has a little common sense.”
And in this way the trouble was finally smoothed out by Joel’s quick diplomacy, and the guests, eager to avert another painful scene between the two women, rose to go. And it was in this way that they departed, not without a final explosion of booming and astounded laughter from Mrs. Pierce as she walked out towards her car, a final hilarious reference to “redecoration,” and the King of Siam, and the modern prototype of Catherine the Great.
