“Lady Montairy Quite contrairy, How do your Cochins grow?”
sang Lothaw gayly.
The Duchess looked shocked. After a prolonged silence Lothaw abruptly and gravely said:—
“If you please, ma’am, when I come into my property I should like to build some improved dwellings for the poor, and marry Lady Coriander.”
“You amaze me, dear friend; and yet both your aspirations are noble and eminently proper,” said the Duchess.
“Coriander is but a child,—and yet,” she added, looking graciously upon her companion, “for the matter of that, so are you.”
CHAPTER III
Mr. Putney Giles’s was Lothaw’s first grand dinner-party. Yet, by carefully watching the others, he managed to acquit himself creditably, and avoided drinking out of the finger-bowl by first secretly testing its contents with a spoon. The conversation was peculiar and singularly interesting.
“Then you think that monogamy is simply a question of the thermometer?” said Mrs. Putney Giles to her companion.