"It's been great, Mrs. Selfridge. Nothing like it since the days of the
open dance hall."
Mrs. Mallory hastily suppressed an internal smile and stepped into the
breach. "_How_ do you do it?" she asked her hostess enviously.
"My dear, if _you_ say it was a success--"
"What else could one say?"
Genevieve Mallory always preferred to tell the truth when it would do
just as well. Now it did better, since it contributed to her own ironic
sense of amusement. Macdonald had once told her that Mrs. Selfridge made
him think of the saying, "Monkey sees, monkey does." The effervescent
little woman had never had an original idea in her life.
Most of those who had been at the dance slept late. They were oblivious
of the fact that the storm had quickened again into a howling gale.
Nor did they know the two bits of news that were passing up and down
the main street and being telephoned from house to house. One of the
items was that the stage for Katma had failed to reach the roadhouse at
Smith's Crossing. The message had come over the long-distance telephone
early in the morning. The keeper of the roadhouse added his private
fears that the stage, crawling up the divide as the blizzard swept down,
must have gone astray and its occupants perished.
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