The Wishing Carpet by Ruth Comfort Mitchell

Author:Ruth Comfort Mitchell [Mitchell, Ruth Comfort]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

GLEN DARROW’S bitter wish could hardly have been granted with propriety at that very instant, for the reason that young Mr. Peter Parker of Pasadena was in bed.

It was barely eight o’clock, which meant that he was just settling down into the final, delicious doze of the morning which he always allowed himself after an exceptionally full night. Takasugi, his valet, had not even opened the door a cautious crack to reconnoiter.

But if eight A.M. meant only a deeper dive into the depths of slumber for her son, it meant very nearly the middle of the forenoon to Mrs. Eugenia Parker, President of the Federated Women’s Clubs of the United States, eating her well-balanced breakfast from a tray in her study, three floors below. She was awake at five every morning, and arose after a few moments of marshaling her thoughts for the day, did a brisk Daily Dozen to the exhortations of a small, compact, traveling phonograph, got briskly in and out of a stone-cold tub, walked for ten vigorous minutes up and down the graveled driveway, and sat down to her desk.

At eight o’clock her breakfast was brought to her—fruit, dry toast, one slightly boiled egg, black coffee. At nine her secretary arrived and they were closeted until one o’clock, when the president paused for luncheon, either at home or abroad, as the case might be—likewise an austere meal. Afternoons and evenings were given over to official and semi-official duties, and midnight frequently saw her back at her desk for a hasty glance at the late mail, her thick iron-gray hair braided into an uncompromising pigtail, her thick figure relaxing thankfully in the freedom of a perfectly plain kimono of dark gray silk. Mrs. Parker was straightly and inexorably corseted by day and sat always rigidly erect in severe straight chairs, but in the late and intimate hours she leaned back and sighed luxuriously now and then. Nature’s idea had been to make her a soft, fat old lady, but Mrs. Eugenia Parker knew that it was not necessary to humor Nature in these little matters, and she was clearing sixty with a satisfying hardness and firmness of flesh. She was a plain woman and well aware of it, and went in for dignity rather than adornment, and there was force and character in her face, as well as much tolerant and unsentimental kindliness. When she presided at conventions the country women noted with surprise and a certain pleasure that her hair was not marcelled, nor were her short and serviceable nails conspicuously manicured, and on her salient chin there was a faint but determined little beard. Mrs. Parker did not consider that decorative, and sincerely meant to have it attended to, as soon as she could conscientiously take the time.

On that particular morning she read the solid and conservative editorial in her favorite daily with cordial approval, and turned to the little heap of newspapers which had come in by yesterday’s late mail and were still in their wrappers.

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