The "skip" brought
down on her soul a whole five-foot shelf of remembrances of her first
New York love-affair with the lame waiter in the bakery. All her good
fortune had been set in motion by poor, old, shabby "Skip." She had
soared away like some rainbow-hued bubble gently releasing itself
from the day pipe that inflated it out of the suds of its origin.
Kedzie had learned to be ashamed of Skip as long ago as when she was
a Greek dancer. She had not seen or heard of him since she sent him
the insulting answer to his stage-door note. And now he had saved
himself up for a ruinous reappearance when she was in the company
of a Marquess--and on such an errand!
What on earth was Skip doing so far from the Bronx and in the
environs of Newport, of all places? It occurred to Kedzie that
Skip might ask her the same question.
CHAPTER II
The terror his footsteps inspired was confirmed by the unforgetable
voice that came across her icy shoulder-blades. He slapped the china
and silver down with the familiar bravura of a quick-lunch waiter,
and her heart sank, remembering that she had once admired his skill.
The Marquess looked up at him with a glare of rebuke as Skip posed
himself patiently with one hand, knuckles down, on the table, the
other on his hip, and demanded, with misplaced enthusiasm:
"Well, folks, what's it goin' to be?"
The Marquess had been somewhat democratized by his life in the army,
and, being a true Briton, he always expected the worst in America.
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