The Moneychangers

CONTENTS

“I am,” said Reggie Mann, “quite beside myself to meet this Lucy Dupree.”
“Who told you about her?” asked Allan Montague.
“Ollie's been telling everybody about her,” said Reggie. “It sounds really wonderful. But I fear he must have exaggerated.”
“People seem to develop a tendency to exaggeration,” said Montague, “when they talk about Lucy.”
“I am in quite a state about her,” said Reggie.
Allan Montague looked at him and smiled. There were no visible signs of agitation about Reggie. He had come to take Alice to church, and he was exquisitely groomed and perfumed, and wore a wonderful scarlet orchid in his buttonhole. Montague, lounging back in a big leather chair and watching him, smiled to himself at the thought that Reggie regarded Lucy as a new kind of flower, with which he might parade down the Avenue and attract attention.
“Is she large or small?” asked Reggie.
“She is about your size,” said Montague,—which was very small indeed.
Alice entered at this moment in a new spring costume. Reggie sprang to his feet, and greeted her with his inevitable effusiveness.
When he asked, “Do you know her, too?”