"Where did you get that horror? Gift from the Cosmickers?"
"Funny, aren't you? No, I bought it myself, out of my hard-saved income. It's great! I found it at Ossilovi's. He says there isn't another like it out of Asia."
"I should hope not! Though I doubt if it ever saw Asia."
"Nan, you're positively unbearable! One more speech of that sort, and
I'll be right down mad at you."
"Forgive me, Patty, I did let my feelings run away with me. It's all right for you to do these things if you want to, but it doesn't seem like you,—and it jars, somehow."
They went downstairs, and soon Sam Blaney came to take Patty away.
Nan greeted him very pleasantly, but inspected him very carefully. He was not in evening dress, their coterie did not approve of anything so conventional. This was against him in Nan's eyes, for she was a stickler for the formalities. But as he threw back his topcoat, and she saw his voluminous soft silk tie of magenta with vermilion dots, his low rolling collar, and his longish mane of hair, she felt an instinctive dislike to the man. Her sense of justice, however, made her reserve judgment until she knew more of him, and she invited him to tarry a few moments.
Blaney sat down, gracefully enough, and chatted casually, but Patty realised that Nan was looking him over and resented it. And, somehow, Blaney didn't appear to advantage in the Fairfield drawing-room, as he did in his own surroundings. His attitude, while polite, was the least bit careless, and his courtesy was indolent rather than alert. In fact, he conducted himself as an old friend might have done, but in a way which was not permissible in a stranger.
Nan led the conversation to the recent work of some comparatively new and very worthwhile poets. She asked Blaney his opinion of a certain poem.
"Oh, that," and the man hesitated, "well, you see,—I—ah,—that is, I'm reserving my opinion as to that man's work,—yes, reserving my opinion."