Indeed, he felt delighted. She was Miss Jane Lauderdale, the reserved, long-haired relative of this short-haired enthusiast. And she wore no engagement ring—not any ring on any finger. He could only hope that she had no “understanding” with the good-looking chap ranged beside her. If so, she’d have to be made to mis-understand. She was more flustered over his acceptance of the unconscious invitation of that long, strange, magnified look than she had at first appeared. That showed in the tight clutch of her fingers on her feather fan. And she was taller than he had calculated—just enough shorter than he for ideal dancing. One thing about her he needed to decide, but couldn’t. Did she or did she not know that she didn’t know him?
But he must pay attention. Irene, continuing to baby-vamp him, waved him into the chair beside that into which she had sunk. Although of necessity she had dropped his hand she released neither his interest nor his eyes.
“You must be just a terribly important person to be flashed all over Broadway in that rosy wreath. I don’t blame your friends, though, for feeling a bit extravagant over you. We were talking about the sign before you came in—were guessing what kingdom you belong to, animal, vegetable or mineral. Millsy Harford here held out that you were more likely some manufactured product than anti-fat. Isn’t it all quite too funny for anything?”
“My folks used to say, from the rate of speed at which I grew up—” Pape applied to his ready store of persiflage—“that I was more like a vegetable than a boy. I always thought I was animal, judging by my appetite, you know. But my life’s been kind of lived with minerals. Maybe I’m all three.”
“How interesting.” Mrs. Allen, a lady faded to medium in coloring, age and manner, turned from an over-rail inspection of some social notable among the horseshoe’s elect to survey him through her lorgnette. “Just why, if I am not too personal, are you called ‘Why-Not?’”
“My nickname about the headwaters of our greatest river, madam.”
From her look of vague perplexity Pape turned his glance around the group until it halted for a study of Jane Lauderdale’s face—again Irish pale, tropic-eyed, illegible. He chose his further words with care.
“Guess I was the first to ask myself that question after the boys hung the sobri. on me and nailed it there,” he said, addressing himself to none in particular. “I made the interesting discovery that there wasn’t any answer, although there are limitless answers to almost every seemingly unanswerable question. You see, when I find myself up against the impossible, I just ask myself why not and buck it. I’ve found the impossible a boogey-boo.”
“You call yourself, then, a possible person?”
He was not to be discountenanced by Jane’s quiet insertion.