But at present, the tea is much too good for the price in
spite of its inescapable laundry tang, and there is a flat green bowl full
of Japanese iris bulbs in the window--the second of which pleases Mrs.
Severance and the first Ted.
Besides like most establishments on the verge of bankruptcy, it is such
a quiet place to talk--the only other two people in it are a boy with
startled hair and an orange smock and a cigaretty girl called Tommy, and
she is far too busy telling him that that dream about wearing a necklace
of flying-fish shows a dangerous inferiority complex even to comment
caustically on strangers from uptown who _will_ intrude on the dear
Village.
"Funny stuff--dreams," says Ted uneasily, catching at overheard phrases for
a conversational jumping-off place. His mind, always a little on edge now
with work and bad feeding, has been too busy since they came in comparing
Rose Severance with Elinor Piper, and wondering why, when one is so like a
golden-skinned August pear and the other a branch of winter blackberries
against snow just fallen, it is not as good but somehow warmer to think of
the first against your touch than the second, to leave him wholly at ease.
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