The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton Page A

start a separate bag for
your
clippings soon.’
    Undine stretched her arms luxuriously above her head andgazed through lowered lids at the foreshortened reflection of her face.
    ‘Mercy! Don’t jerk about like that. Am I to put in this rose? There – you
are
lovely!’ Mrs Heeny sighed, as the pink petals sank into the hair above the girl’s forehead.
    Undine pushed her chair back, and sat supporting her chin on her clasped hands while she studied the result of Mrs Heeny’s manipulations.
    ‘Yes – that’s the way Mrs Peter Van Degen’s flower was put in the other night; only hers was a camellia. – Do you think I’d look better with a camellia?’
    ‘I guess if Mrs Van Degen looked like a rose she’d ‘a worn a rose,’ Mrs Heeny rejoined poetically. ‘Sit still a minute longer,’ she added. ‘Your hair’s so heavy I’d feel easier if I was to put in another pin.’
    Undine remained motionless, and the manicure, suddenly laying both hands on the girl’s shoulders, and bending over to peer at her reflection, said playfully: ‘Ever been engaged before, Undine?’
    A blush rose to the face in the mirror, spreading from chin to brow, and running rosily over the white shoulders from which their covering had slipped down.
    ‘My! If he could see you now!’ Mrs Heeny jested.
    Mrs Spragg, rising noiselessly, glided across the room and became lost in a minute examination of the dress laid out on the bed.
    With a supple twist Undine slipped from Mrs Heeny’s hold.
    ‘Engaged? Mercy, yes! Didn’t you know? To the Prince of Wales. I broke it off because I wouldn’t live in the Tower.’
    Mrs Spragg, lifting the dress cautiously over her arm, advanced with a reassured smile.
    ‘I s’pose Undie’ll go to Europe now,’ she said to Mrs Heeny.
    ‘I guess Undie
will
!’ the young lady herself declared. ‘We’re going to sail right afterward. – Here, mother, do be careful of my hair!’ She ducked gracefully to slip into the lacy fabric which her mother held above her head.
    As she rose Venus-like above its folds there was a tap on the door, immediately followed by its tentative opening.
    ‘Mabel!’ Undine muttered, her brows lowering like her father’s; and Mrs Spragg, wheeling about to screen her daughter, addressed herself protestingly to the half-open door.
    ‘Who’s there? Oh, that
you
, Mrs Lipscomb? Well, I don’t know as you
can –
Undie isn’t half-dressed yet –’
    ‘Just like her – always pushing in!’ Undine murmured as she slipped her arms into their transparent sleeves.
    ‘Oh, that don’t matter – I’ll help dress her!’ Mrs Lipscomb’s large blonde person surged across the threshold. ‘Seems to me I ought to lend a hand tonight, considering I was the one that introduced them!’
    Undine forced a smile, but Mrs Spragg, her soft wrinkles deepening with resentment, muttered to Mrs Heeny, as she bent down to shake out the girl’s train: ‘I guess my daughter’s only got to show herself –’
    The first meeting with old Mr Dagonet was less formidable than Undine had expected. She had been once before to the house in Washington Square, when, with her mother, she had returned Mrs Marvell’s ceremonial visit; but on that occasion Ralph’s grandfather had not been present. All the rites connected with her engagement were new and mysterious to Undine, and none more so than the unaccountable necessity of ‘dragging’ – as she phrased it – Mrs Spragg into the affair. It was an accepted article of the Apex creed that parental detachment should be completest at the moment when the filial fate was decided; and to find that New York reversed this rule was as puzzling to Undine as to her mother. Mrs Spragg was so unprepared for the part she was to play that on the occasion of her visit to Mrs Marvell her helplessness had infected Undine, and their half-hour in the sober faded drawing-room remained among the girl’s most unsatisfactory memories.
    She re-entered it alone with