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Melting the Ice With Miss Lynne Fontanne 195
surrounded by several thousand books — shelves on shelves, from carpet to ceiling.
“Yours, Miss Fontanne?”
“Dear, no! A journalist had these rooms before Miss Hanaford and I took them. What curious things you American journalists read.”
I examined, and the first title that struck my eye was “Ask Mamma.”
“That ought to be helpful,” I blithered brightly. Her cool brown eyes were searching me for I knew not what; her well-drawn nose and chin were held a bit high ; she was as crisp as lettuce ought to be, this trig, smart, lean, little English girl.
“How about the one next to it, ‘Why Be Fat?’ ”
I looked. It was really there. Such a silly book for such an unfat lady! It was most ridiculous. We laughed together and the ice was cracked — some of it.
“English, aren’t you?” Miss Fontanne smiled.
Was she spoofing me?
“No; Californian.”
“Oh. Perhaps it’s your clothes,” she considered.
“What’s the matter with them? Don’t they fit?”
“Not too well. Most American clothes fit a bit too well to — er — be quite casual, don’t you think?”
Was she spoofing? “Gee, those English!” I thought with the American in Harcourt’s comedy of charming bad manners — where Lynn Fontanne plays so charmingly at being a cat.
“Miss Fontanne,” I said, “I may not look it, but I’m terribly shy.”
“Really?” I thought her eyes softened.
“Really.”
“Well, then, I don’t mind telling you that so am I. I’m so shy that sometimes it just hurts. And this