She of the far-reaching plumes bent her eyebrows in severe deprecation.
"Connie, your slang is simply vicious. Will you be good enough to tell me what 'calls the turn' means?"
"Ask poppa."
Appealed to by the censorious one, the elderly man stopped twiddling the bit of gold quartz on his watch-guard long enough to explain. He did it with a little hesitancy, picking his way among the words as one might handle broken glass, or the edged tools of an unfamiliar trade. He was a plain man, and he stood in considerable awe of the picture-hat and its wearer. When he had finished, the toque made honorable amends.
"I beg your pardon, Myra. Really, I didn't know it had anything to do with gambling. But to go back to our manners: I'll give you the ponies and the phaeton if I don't convince you that the absent-minded gentleman on our left here is the tenderest of tenderfoots—most probably from Philadelphia, too," she added, in mischievous afterthought.
"You wouldn't dare!"
"You think not? Just wait and you'll see. Oh, cousin mine, you've a lot to learn about your kind, yet. If you stay out here six months or a year, you will begin to think your philosophy hasn't been half dreamful enough."
"How absurd you are, Constance. If I didn't know you to be"—
"Wait a minute; let me start you off right: good, and sensible, and modest, and unassuming, and dutiful, and brimful of fads"—she checked the attributes off on her fingers. "You see I have them all by heart."
The little cloud of dust puffing from beneath the drop-curtain began to subside, and the thumping and rumbling on the stage died away what time the musicians were clambering back to their places in the orchestra. Miss Van Vetter swept the aisles and the standing-room with her opera-glass.