Clara and Mr. Tiffany Read Online Free PDF Page B

Place.”
    Hank folded his hands in a professorial way. “I know a good deal about the elder Tiffany, if you care to ask me sometime.”
    “I will!”
    “Plato wrote that men and women would eventually respond much in the same way to the same conditions.” This interjected by Francie, anolder woman delicate as a wren, with a complexion the pale pink of her blouse. “I take that to mean that if a man can have integrity and morality in factories and workshops, then so can women.”
    “Oh, you and your books,” Mrs. Hackley grumbled. “Will you never stop prattling on about those philosophers? They’re all dead, Francie.” Frumpish Mrs. Hackley forked an overlarge morsel of corned beef and chewed vigorously, her mouth making all sorts of exaggerated shapes. “I have never been able to understand how a true lady could accept money from anyone but a father, a husband, an uncle, or a brother.”
    “Enough, Maggie. I’ll shut off your radiator if you go on against my new boarder. She’s right proper, and I won’t have you laying damage to her person.”
    “In this tippy world, Mrs. Hackley, a single woman does what she has to,” I said, “and if she enjoys it, as I do, so much the finer her life.”
    “Brava, Mrs. Driscoll,” ventured the gentleman who had pushed in my chair.
    I saw now his clean-shaven skin taut over elegant, defined cheekbones.
    “Ah, I’d begun to think you were mute,” I said. “Handsome, but mute.” Francie snickered daintily. “Remind me of your name, please.”
    “Bernard Booth.”
    Not even a full sentence and I could tell he was English. I always melted at an English accent.
    The front door opened and slammed shut. A beardless man with ruddy complexion and black hair entered through the arch from the parlor. Whistling “Yankee Doodle,” he swept off his black fedora with its small red feather, flung it onto the hat rack along with his long red silk scarf, and did a little dance step.
    “Great news, comrades.” He held out both arms. “You are, at this moment, looking at the recipient of the honor of having my portrait of Helena Modjeska hung in the Players Club.”
    Applause burst forth from both tables.
    He was a bit of a Yankee Doodle dandy himself, with his red handkerchief pointing up out of the pocket in his frock coat. He bent to lay a humorously loud kiss on Miss Owens’s cheek.
    “Sorry I’m late, Merry. The discussion of where it would hang went on and on. In the end it was decided that because of Modjeska’s role as Ophelia, it should hang next to John’s of Edwin Booth as Hamlet.”
    “Mind letting us in on who you mean, or are we supposed to know?” asked Merry.
    “Why, John Singer Sargent, of course.”
    That was impressive enough to me, but Dudley scowled. “You’re on a first-name basis now? Georgie and Johnny?”
    “Not just yet.”
    “Don’t be filling yourself up with grand ideas like some lawdy-daw or you won’t want to keep taking your meals with the likes of us. I need your tuppence.” Miss Owens turned to me. “Moved out, he did, into his studio. It’s only a good spit from here to next door, so he’s always fiddle-faddling around here as if he owns the place.”
    “So this is the artist who painted the lovely pond in my room.”
    “A mere caprice done on a rainy day.” He dismissed it with a flip of his slender hand.
    “All it needs is the ruins of a temple in the background,” I said.
    George made a circle of his lips. “Great idea, Miss—”
    “Driscoll. But please call me Clara.”
    “Clara.”
    “
Claire,
” said Bernard Booth. “Light. Brilliant. Clear-sighted.” He held up his water glass. “To Clara, our brilliant new friend.”
    “Flattery in the Queen’s English sends me to the moon,” I murmured, and our eyes met for an instant.
    “And to George.” Dudley raised his glass. “Our brilliant old friend.”
    “And to Walt, our forever friend,” Hank McBride added.
    “All right,” Merry said. “You can have