"For a punster, you'd better say; but at least one can't doubt its genuineness. If he had been going to assume a stage name, he would have chosen something more romantic."
"Who is he, and where did Mrs. Stanley accumulate him?"
Bobby rolled his eyes expressively towards the portly, satin-clad figure of his hostess.
"Mrs. Stanley hunts every lion that comes to Manhattan Island. As a rule, she catches only cubs; this is the exception which proves the rule."
"I haven't heard the name before."
"No; Thayer is a brand-new lion, but fully grown. Of course, with that name, his family tree sprouted in Massachusetts; but he has been in Germany and Italy for years. He only landed, the third, and is to make his formal début at the Lloyd Avalons's on the twentieth. Don't you want to meet him?"
"N—no. I am afraid it would be anticlimax."
"Not a bit of it. He doesn't indulge in speckled neckties and an imperial. He is a man, as well as a singer."
"You know him, then?"
"Yes, as one knows any number of people. Lorimer has had him at the club occasionally, and I have met him there."