"Do you want to be a Life Preserver as well as a Brightener, Elizabeth, my child?" asked Mrs. Carstairs.
"Depends on whose life," I replied, making a lovely blue smoke ring before I spoke and another when I'd finished.
I hoped to shock Mrs. Carstairs, in order to see what the nicest old lady on earth would look like when scandalized. But I was disappointed. She was not scandalized. She asked for a cigarette, and took it; my last.
"The latest style in my country is to make your smoke ring loop the loop, and do it through the nose," she informed me, calmly. "I can't do it myself—yet. But Terry Burns can."
"Who's Terry Burns?" I asked.
"The man whose life ought to be preserved."
"It certainly ought," said I, "if he can make smoke rings loop the loop through his nose. Oh, you know what I mean!"
"He hardly takes enough interest in things to do even that, nowadays," sighed Mrs. Carstairs.
"Good heavens! what's the matter with the man—senile decay?" I flung at her. "Terry isn't at all a decayed name."
"And Terry isn't a decayed man. He's about twenty-six, if you choose to call that senile. He's almost too good-looking. He's not physically ill. And he's got plenty of money. All the same, he's likely to die quite soon, I should say."