Explore "The Ball of Fire" by George Randolph Chester on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Gaiety consists in rising in the morning so tired that it takes three hours of earnest work with a maid, a masseuse, a physical directress, a hairdresser, and a bonnetiere, before one can produce a spontaneous silvery laugh, which is never required, expected or considered good form before two P. M. Gail Sargent went in for gaiety, and, moreover, she enjoyed it. She rode, she drove, she went calling and received, she attended teas and gave them, she dined out and entertained, in the name of her eager Aunt Grace, she went to theatres, the opera, concerts, and the lively midnight cafés, which had all gone nervously insane with freak dancing, she attended balls, house parties, and all the in-between diversions which her novelty-seeking friends could discover or invent, and she flirted outrageously! She used her eyes, and the pretty pout of her red lips, and the toss of her head, and all the wiles of coquetry, to turn men into asses, and she enjoyed that, too!
It was a part of her feminine birthright to enter with zest into this diversion, and it was only envy which criticised her. Aunt Helen Davies, who knew her world by chapter and verse, stood behind the scenes of all this active vaudeville, and applauded. It was at the opera that Aunt Helen could no longer conceal her marvel.