Summary
In a hamlet where dust devils pirouette across sun-scorched porches, Princess Jones—niece of a shopkeeper whose shelves sag with penny candy and dented tins—keeps her gaze fixed on the gilded mirage of high society. A single postcard of a chandeliered ballroom is enough to ignite her; she pockets her scant savings, boards the rattling excursion train, and descends upon a nearby resort whose manicured lawns gleam like malachite. She has no notion that the iced lemonade costs more than her uncle’s weekly receipts. Enter Arthur Forbes, reluctant heir dispatched by a tyrannical uncle to ‘learn pigment instead of profit.’ He sketches the lake, but his charcoal keeps tracing the curve of Princess’s throat. She, thinking him merely kind, presses a crumpled five-dollar bill into his palm—‘buy me something beautiful, something no one here would dare wear.’ Arthur vanishes to the city, returns with a silk gown the color of candlelit topaz, and overnight the lobby whispers of Balkan bloodlines: the tilt of her wrist, the Slavic vowels they swear they detect in her hello. When kidnappers—convinced they can ransom a throne—spirit her away in a Packard phaeton, Arthur trades his paint-stained smock for a hero’s sprint, commandeers a moonlit motorbike, and reclaims her on a steel bridge that trembles like cathedral organ pipes. Uncle, mollified by headlines, blesses the union; the real princess, amused by the counterfeit, offers a cigarette case and friendship; and the country girl who once counted pennies now signs the register as Mrs. Forbes, ink still wet with chiaroscuro dreams.
Synopsis
Princess Jones, a country storekeeper's niece who dreams of wealth and position, takes a vacation at a nearby fashionable resort--without realizing its cost--and meets wealthy Arthur Forbes, whose uncle sent him to the country to become an artist. Arthur's love for Princess leads him to buy her an expensive gown (Princess has given him a small amount of money for the purchase of a gown), which causes her to be mistaken for a Balkan princess by both the other guests and kidnappers; but Arthur rescues Princess and receives his uncle's approval of their marriage; and Princess becomes friends with the real princess.
