CHAPTER IX.
A THANKSGIVING PARTY.
In Oakland avenue there stands another mansion. It is a lofty pile of brownish stone, and is luxuriously complete in its every detail. Standing as it does on a prominent hill, it comes in for a great share of excellent praise for its beauty and magnificence, and is classed as a close rival of that other mansion in Highland avenue.
Here lived, when in the effulgence of his power and influence in the complicated machinery of a big city, one Jacob Cobb—a short, squatty, round-faced, blue-eyed, clear-complexioned man of business, so far as anybody knew about his worldly affairs. Here his wife Betty, and daughters, Susanna and Marjorie, entertained the eclat of society according to the à la mode of fashion; and many were the gay parties, balls and dinners that they gave for the select few constituting their circle of acquaintances.
Charming, indeed, were these great affairs, unrivaled in all their appointments in the high-toned residential district in this unequaled city of social madness and financial debauchery. Oh, yes; charming they were, indeed, to those select of the very select who pandered to Mammon in the workaday hours and to Bacchus in the time of refreshment.
Aye, aye; here came the proud, the haughty, the vapid, the insipid; the hilarious strumpets of swelldom, the strutting monstrosities of fashion, the pompous parrots of mimicry; the glib scandal-mongers, the gregarious loiterers over afternoon teas; the straight-laced of the kid-gloved gentry, the snobs, the prudes, the fops; the blase young men, the genteel puppets, the vacuous gentlemen, the bombasts, the old curmudgeons; the doting mothers, the innocent maidens; with now and then a sprinkling of the good, the sage, the savant, as a savory condiment to the mess of social pottage the Cobbs dished out of their pot of ethics.
These events were wonderful achievements in the life of Mrs. Cobb, and Mr. Cobb paid the bills without a murmur or complaint.
Mrs. Cobb was sumptuously independent in the conduct of these affairs. All the glories of the Queen of Henry of Navarre could not equal her glorious accomplishments in the one great and only ambition of her life—shining in society. Mr. Cobb was bumptuously indifferent as to how his wife shone, just so she shone, and that in her shining she did not obfuscate him altogether.
Mrs. Cobb was chunky, like her husband. She was the quintessence of charm. She was the substantive mood of the present tense of the verb to be. She was gay, humorous, and a true leader—in her line of activity. She was near the middle time of life, but she had lost little of her beauty. Her dark brown eyes snapped like sparks of fire, and her cheeks glowed pink when she was enjoying the company around her; when in a different mood, she ever had the fine quality of knowing how to be pleasant when most bored.