[The Avalanche by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton]@TWC D-Link bookThe Avalanche CHAPTER I 2/45
She even went directly down to the Palace Hotel and reproached her august parent for failing to warn her that a dollar was not capable of infinite expansion. But no wonder she had been extravagant, she told Ruyler plaintively.
It had been like a fairy tale, this sudden release from the rigid economies of her girlhood, when she had rarely had a franc in her pocket, and they had lived in a suite of the old family villa on one of the hills of Rouen, Madame Delano paying her brother for their lodging, and dressing herself and Helene with the aid of a half paralyzed seamstress with a fiery red nose.
Ma foi! It was the nightmare of her youth, that nose and that croaking voice.
But the woman had fingers, and a taste! And her mother could have concocted a smart evening frock out of an old window curtain. But the petted little daughter was never asked to go out and buy a spool of thread, much less was she consulted in the household economies.
All she noticed was that her clothes were smarter than Cousin Marthe's, who had a real dressmaker, and was subject to fits of jealous sulks.
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