Now Kedzie had a genuine Lady at her feet. It was a triumph indeed.
It was not hard now to believe that she would have all the world
at her feet one day.
Lady Powell-Carewe used Kedzie's frame as a mere standard to fly
banners from. Leaving the head and shoulders to stand out like
the wax bust of a wistful doll, she started a cloud of fabric
about her in the most extravagant fashion. She reined it in sharply
at the waist, but again it flared to such distances on all sides that
Kedzie could never have sailed through any door but that of a garage
without compression.
On this vast bell of silk she hung streamers of rosettes, flowers of
colors that would have been strident if they had been the eighteenth
of a shade stronger. As it was, they were as delicious as cream
curdled in a syrup of cherries. The whole effect would have been
burlesque if it had not been the whim of a brilliant taste. Men
would look it at and say, "Good Lord!" Women would murmur, enviously,
"Oh, Lord!" Kedzie's soul expanded to the ultimate fringe of the
farthest furbelow.
When the fantasy was assured Lady Powell-Carewe had Kedzie extracted
from it. Then pondering her sapling slenderness, once more she caught
from the air an inspiration. She would incase Kedzie in a sheath of
soft, white kid marked with delicate lines and set off with black
gloves and a hat of green leaves. And this she would call "The White
Birch."
And that was all the creating she felt up to for the day.
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