And John wheeled his chair close up to her, "didn't you hear him the other day, when that tiresome, stupid Mrs. Frink was here, inquire so touchingly after a bad cough which he recollected she had when he met her a year ago? Did you see the effect it had on the silly old thing? I wonder she got out the door without having it widened, she was so puffed up.
"Mrs. Howe!"
And John moved up still closer, "if that man should meet our old cat in the entry after a month's absence, he'd take off his hat, and inquire after that very precocious kitten of hers he had the pleasure of seeing on the stairs when he was last here. Fact—I'm astonished at you, Mrs. Howe," and John dumped himself down again into the chair; "the man is a jackass, a fool, a perfume-bottle on legs—faugh!
"Mrs. Howe!"
And John wheeled round again, "didn't he upset that old squirrel-eyed Miss Price, by repeating a common-place remark of hers which she made him two or three years ago, and which he had the brass to say struck him so forcibly at the time that he never forgot it? Didn't she go home in the full belief that she had up to that time been terribly underrated by her folks at home? Certainly;—now do you suppose he does all that for nothing, Mrs. Howe? No—he gets his pay out of you all by an invitation to a good dinner. He does the same here, whenever it is more convenient to stop here than down town, and then you and all the rest of these silly women become his trumpeters.
"For his fine speeches to steamboat captains, he gets a free pass in their boats; landlords of hotels, ditto; that's it, Mrs. Howe.
"I am astonished at you, Mrs. Howe.
"He gets presents of hats, presents of coats, presents of canes, presents of pictures, presents of books and stationery.
"As for the women, of course, as I said before, such flummery takes them right down—just as it did you, Mrs. Howe.
"May he be strangled in his pink and blue cravat before he comes here to another dinner.