Frank and Bertha drove down in the electric brougham, for which they had
with difficulty found a place along the vehicle-lined curb of Mission
street. And, as they were early, they halted in the immense and
handsome, though old-fashioned, foyer to observe the crowd. The air was
heavy with perfume.
"Look at that haughty dame with a hundred-thousand dollar necklace," he
smiled. "One would have thought her father was at least a king. Forty
years ago he drove a dray.... And that one with the ermine coat and
priceless tiara. Wouldn't you take her for a princess? Ah, well, more
power to her! But her mother cleaned soiled linen in Washerwoman's
Lagoon and her dad renovated cuspidors, swept floors in the
Bella Union."
But the girl did not seem interested. "I wonder," she remarked a little
later, "why it makes so very much--ah--difference ... who one's
parents were?"
There was a curious, half-detached sadness in her tone. Frank wondered
suddenly if he had blundered. Bertha had never mentioned her parents. He
vaguely understood that they had died abroad and had foreborne to
question, fearing to arouse some tragic memory.
"Of course, it really doesn't matter," he said hastily; "it's only when
people put on airs that I think of such things.
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