FASHION NOTES

Taranaki Daily News, 21 September 1931, Page 13

FASHION NOTES

AT OUR HOTEL. % . BABA BENTLEY. (By Mary Forsyth.) Baba Bentley is one of those young Women who think they only have to be pretty, to bring lots of clothes and heaps of cheek, in order to be popular in the hotel. Even after two or three seasons of travelling round with her mother, Baba still has not learned the truth. Baba’s arrival in smart travelling clothes, with just the right kind of luggage, and at just the right moment to make an impression (a few minutes before lunch, when the lounge is full of watchers) makes me think of the ten* nis tyro who rouses false hopes by arriving at the courts with three racquets,. all carefully cased. Her makeup, her dress, everything she says and does, are so palpably calculated to attract the unmarried men in the hotel that these same men, being shy birds, •especially since the war, take fright at once. More than that, she thinks it funny to be rude to any elderly ladies she sees sitting about; she imagines it marks .the difference between v their stodginess and her vim. She never •bothers to find out whether they are or are not relatives of the young men. In many cases they are. So they spoil her game for her nine times out of ten, in ways she considers ‘‘spiteful,” and they call “looking after dear Robert.” Mothers and aunts, being women themselves, can do more in the way of putting epokes in wheels than they ever confess to their sons and nephews. Baba can never understand that there ere times when you can poke fun at a man, and times when it is safer to refrain. She thinks young men are always ready to laugh heartily at themselves. As a matter of fact, they are even worse at it than women. The biggest mistake she made was when, before about a dozen people, she twitted Bill Johnston, remarking how unfortunate it was that Mildred Coote s old “flame” had turned up just us Bill was “making good going.” Now John«ton had “fallen” for Mildred, as all of us knew, and had received a considerable shock. He was even meditating seeking consolation with Baba, who could be amusing sometimes when she did not talk too much. But his faint interest turned to hatred, and at that moment he showed it in his face. Even Baba saw! “Aren’t. men unisportsmanlike not to take a little thing like that,” she asked. Adding: “Mother can’t sleep here, so we’re going on . . . I’ve got a new cherry-red two-piece to travel in . .