And Gil, too, if he will.
It’s just across the lake from the Emery Lodge, you know, and the East Gate Hotel.
And the Phants’ place, you know, the Phants of Utica, is just below theirs near Sharon.
Isn’t that just wonderful?
Won’t that be great?
I wish you and Dad would make up your minds to build up there now sometime, Mamma.
It looks to me now as though nearly everybody that’s worth anything down here is moving up there.”
She talked so fast and swung about so, looking now at the open fire burning in the grate, then out of the two high windows that commanded the front lawn and a full view of Wykeagy Avenue, lit by the electric lights in the winter dusk, that her mother had no opportunity to insert any comment until this was over.
However, she managed to observe:
“Yes?
Well, what about the Anthonys and the Nicholsons and the Taylors?
I haven’t heard of their leaving Greenwood yet.”
“Oh, I know, not the Anthonys or the Nicholsons or the Taylors.
Who expects them to move?
They’re too old fashioned.
They’re not the kind that would move anywhere, are they?
No one thinks they are.
Just the same Greenwood isn’t like Twelfth Lake. You know that yourself.
And all the people that are anybody down on the South Shore are going up there for sure.
The Cranstons next year, Sondra says.
And after that, I bet the Harriets will go, too.”
“The Cranstons and the Harriets and the Finchleys and Sondra,” commented her mother, half amused and half irritated.
“The Cranstons and you and Bertine and Sondra — that’s all I hear these days.”
For the Cranstons, and the Finchleys, despite a certain amount of local success in connection with this newer and faster set, were, much more than any of the others, the subject of considerable unfavorable comment.
They were the people who, having moved the Cranston Wickwire Company from Albany, and the Finchley Electric Sweeper from Buffalo, and built large factories on the south bank of the Mohawk River, to say nothing of new and grandiose houses in Wykeagy Avenue and summer cottages at Greenwood, some twenty miles northwest, were setting a rather showy, and hence disagreeable, pace to all of the wealthy residents of this region.
They were given to wearing the smartest clothes, to the latest novelties in cars and entertainments, and constituted a problem to those who with less means considered their position and their equipment about as fixed and interesting and attractive as such things might well be.
The Cranstons and the Finchleys were in the main a thorn in the flesh of the remainder of the elite of Lycurgus — too showy and too aggressive.
“How often have I told you that I don’t want you to have so much to do with Bertine or that Letta Harriet or her brother either?
They’re too forward. They run around and talk and show off too much.
And your father feels the same as I do in regard to them.
As for Sondra Finchley, if she expects to go with Bertine and you, too, then you’re not going to go with her either much longer.
Besides I’m not sure that your father approves of your going anywhere without some one to accompany you.
You’re not old enough yet. And as for your going to Twelfth Lake to the Finchleys, well, unless we all go together, there’ll be no going there, either.”
And now Mrs. Griffiths, who leaned more to the manner and tactics of the older, if not less affluent families, stared complainingly at her daughter.
Nevertheless Bella was no more abashed that she was irritated by this.
On the contrary she knew her mother and knew that she was fond of her; also that she was intrigued by her physical charm as well as her assured local social success as much as was her father, who considered her perfection itself and could be swayed by her least, as well as her much practised, smile.
“Not old enough, not old enough,” commented Bella reproachfully.
“Will you listen?
I’ll be eighteen in July.
I’d like to know when you and Papa are going to think I’m old enough to go anywhere without you both.
Wherever you two go, I have to go, and wherever I want to go, you two have to go, too.”
“Bella,” censured her mother.
Then after a moment’s silence, in which her daughter stood there impatiently, she added, “Of course, what else would you have us do?
When you are twenty-one or two, if you are not married by then, it will be time enough to think of going off by yourself.
But at your age, you shouldn’t be thinking of any such thing.”
Bella cocked her pretty head, for at the moment the side door downstairs was thrown open, and Gilbert Griffiths, the only son of this family and who very much in face and build, if not in manner or lack of force, resembled Clyde, his western cousin, entered and ascended.
He was at this time a vigorous, self-centered and vain youth of twenty-three who, in contrast with his two sisters, seemed much sterner and far more practical.
Also, probably much more intelligent and aggressive in a business way — a field in which neither of the two girls took the slightest interest.
He was brisk in manner and impatient.
He considered that his social position was perfectly secure, and was utterly scornful of anything but commercial success.