Swinging her feet free of the floor, she kicked off her slippers. Then she hugged Aunt Hortensia and thanked her, and, please did she and father mind if the new social leader left them and betook herself to bed, where they might send her crackers and milk for her dinner before she toppled off to sleep?
They laughed through their own weariness as Gloria, gathering up her cast-away footwear, proceeded to drag herself up the staircase, bent far over in imitation of an ancient cripple. Reaching her own room, she screamed lustily to Burroughs, her English maid, to run a hot bath for her, and for goodness' sake to get her out of her wreck of dress. As Burroughs fluttered between the two tasks, Gloria hummed the "Aloha Oe" that had been played in waltz time to her last heavenly dance with Freneau. She picked a rose from her dressing table and went through the ritual of "He loves me, he loves me not," down almost to the last petal.
But finding that it would come out on the tragic "not," she gasped, "How silly!" threw the rose away, casting shy little smile at herself in the mirror.
Burroughs, having taken the woe fully wilted and shredded tulle frock from her, wrapped her young mistress in a dressing gown. And Gloria went, still humming, to her bath.
In the midst of the splashing, while Burroughs was straightening the dressing room, she heard; "O Burroughs, do you think my new fur-lined driving coat looks very good on me?"
"Yes, miss. I  Do, Indeed," answered Burroughs, surprised at the apparent irrelevance of the question. 