"Well, then you know there is the literary dodge. Have papers read, not enough to bore people too deeply, but to bore them just enough to give those who attend an impression of intellectuality. Have discussions of literary questions, seasoned with stewed terrapin, and decorated with dress coats and external anatomy gowns. Those who go to such places flatter themselves that they are getting into literary circles and improving their minds, especially if a popular magazinist or the son of some great author can be persuaded to read one of his rejected articles or to make a few remarks now and then. Then there is the musical dodge on the drawing-room scale, or by wholesale, like the Seidl Society, for example. One is able by this means to promote a beautiful art and increase one's social conspicuousness at the same time. Then there is the distinguished-foreigner dodge, give a reception in honor of—"
"Hang it, Philip; I'll tell Mrs. Hilbrough to send for you," said Millard, laughing as he got up and threw his cigarette into the grate. "I don't like to interrupt your lecture, but it's eleven o'clock, and I'm going home. Good-night."
Philip sat there alone and listened to the rain against the windows, and smoked until his cigar went out. The mere turning of things over in his mind, and tacking witty labels to them, afforded so much amusement that inactivity and revery were his favorite indulgences.
Mrs. Hilbrough gave a good deal of thought to her dinner on the next evening after the conversation between Philip Gouverneur and Millard. To have it elegant, and yet not to appear vulgar by making too much fuss over a dinner en famille, taxed her thought and taste. Half an hour before dinner she met her husband with a perturbed face.
"It's too bad that Phillida Callender should have come this evening. That's just the way with an indefinite invitation. Poor girl, I've been asking her to come any evening, and now she has hit on the only one in the year on which I would rather she should have stayed at home."
"I'm sure Phillida is nice enough for anybody," said Hilbrough, sturdily. "I don't see how she interferes with your plan."
"Well, Mr. Millard'll think I've asked her specially to help entertain him, and Phillida is so peculiar. She's nobody in particular, socially, and it will seem an unskillful thing to have asked her—and then she has ideas. Young girls with notions of their own are—well—you know."
"Yes, I know, home-made ideas are a little out of fashion," laughed Hilbrough. "But I'll bet he likes her. Millard isn't a fool if he does part his hair in the middle and carry his cane balanced in his fingers like a pair of steelyards."
"If he takes me to dinner, you must follow with Phillida. Give your left arm—"
"I'll feel like a fool escorting Phillida—"