“To my order of thinking,” said Mitchell thoughtfully scratching a match, “Aunt Mary has been hung up in cold storage just long enough to have acquired the exactly proper gamey flavor. It cannot be denied that to worn, worldly, jaded mortals like you and me, the sight of fresh, ever bubbling, youthful enthusiasm like hers is as thrilling and trilling and rilling as—as—as—” he paused to light his cigarette.
Aunt Mary and Her Escorts.
“Yes, you’d better stutter,” said Burnett. “I thought you were running ahead of your proper signals.”
“It isn’t that,” said Mitchell, puffing gently. “It is that I suddenly recollected that I was alone with you, and my brains tell me that it is a waste of brains to use them in the sense of a plural noun with you. The word in your company,—my dear boy—only comes to me as a verb—as an active verb—and dear knows how often I have itched to apply it forcibly.”
Then they drew up in front of the theater and saw Aunt Mary being unloaded just beyond.
“Great Scott, I feel as if I was a part of a poster!” said Burnett, diving into the carriage depths for the last lot of flowers.
“I feel as if I were a part of the Revelation,” said Mitchell, “I mean—the Revel-eration.”
They rapidly formed on somewhat after the plan of the famous “Marriage under the Directoire.” Aunt Mary commanded the center-rush, leaning on Jack’s arm, and the rest acted as half-backs, left wings, or flower-bearers, just as the reader prefers.