The Craze of Christina — page 145: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Craze of Christina. 14t CHAPTER XI. **T wish to speak to you, Miss Pratt,’’ said Miss Ashley in her stiffest and most distant manner that evening when, after making the necessary change in her dress, her secretary descended to the parlor in order to partake of the “‘high tea”’ laid out upon the table. Since Mr. Clifford had left her premises, Miss Ashley had not spoken to her secretary. She had not had the opportunity of doing so, for Ada Ommaney had stayed on a little while © longer, expatiating freely and gushingly over Clifford’s good looks, and then somebody else has come in, and afterwards Miss Pratt had gone upstairs to her room to change her dress, so that there had been no chance of private conversation. But wrath—righteous wrath more especially —only keeps the better for bottling, and Miss Ashley during the unavoidable delay had worked herself up into a fever of indignation. _ With surprise rapidly merging into down- right- anger, Miss Ashley had noted Clifford’s comicbooks. cc