The Earl of Hitesbury stood near by pulling a pale blond
and puzzled whisker.
"Miss McRamsey has fainted," some one explained.
XIX
PROOF OF THE PUDDING
Spring winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the _Minerva
Magazine_, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his
favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office
when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which
is by way of saying that he turned eastward in Twenty-sixth Street,
safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, and
meandered along the walks of budding Madison Square.
The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed a
pastoral; the color motif was green--the presiding shade at the creation
of man and vegetation.
The callow grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, a
poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that had
breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting tree
buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the
garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky above
was of that pale aquamarine tint that ballroom poets rhyme with "true"
and "Sue" and "coo.
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