"Not half as pathetic as trying to pursue it alone," said Joan, who knew.
"Anyway, it's distinctly smart nowadays to read and have opinions and know something, even in our most frivolous circles—thank heaven!"
"'Business of being a high-brow,' as Archie Blair would say," smiled Joan.
"Oh, Archie Blair! Isn't he absurd?"
Joan suddenly found herself on the defensive. It was all well enough for her to laugh at her protégé, but she did not intend to extend the privilege to others.
"I like him very much," she said, with decision. "He's honest and nice. I believe I like him better than any man I know."
"So do I," said Emily Carmichael unexpectedly. "But that doesn't keep him from being funny!—Do you know, Joan, often as we have him to dinner, and promptly as he pays his party-calls (who taught him that, I wonder?) he has never once set foot in this house just casually, of his own accord! I believe he thinks it wouldn't be 'respectful' of him. And yet I don't seem to awe him particularly, and it certainly isn't Mother's lorgnon—he positively teases her, and she likes it! The big house and that sort of thing wouldn't impress him—he's not enough of a snob. And yet he will not come to see me. Queer, isn't it?"
Joan admitted the queerness, though she was conscious of a slight feeling of gratification. She believed she understood, having once heard Archibald express rather forcibly his opinion of the sort of man who "went with" more than one girl at a time. While he could hardly be said to be "going with" herself, he had made little concealment of the fact that he was entirely at her disposal. She liked him the better for not being at Emily's as well.
"So you've been having him to dinner?" she murmured. "He never told me that!"
"Oh, no, he wouldn't. Haven't you noticed that for all his artlessness, he never really does tell much about himself? Or about anything else! That's one reason he's so popular with Johnny and all of them, I think. He's a sort of confidential agent to the crowd. I know that when Father can't find Johnny sometimes" (she blushed, and Joan nodded sympathetically) "he always calls up Archie Blair, who presently produces him. Sometimes he doesn't bring him home for several days, and telephones that he's got him at his rooms—recuperating, I suppose. Johnny swears by him, of course. I've heard of the wonderful Archie for years, but never saw him until that night at your ball.... It was splendid of you to have him there, Joan!—one of the things that made me want to know you better."