“It’s Cliffe Kennedy,” remarked Mrs Verity, and nodded cheerfully to him. Immediately, as though at some signal, he opened the door, strolled in, and immediately burst forth: “I’ve just told a man that his wife was an abominable female! Yes, an abominable female! and he didn’t know whether to agree with me or not.—Antonia, one doesn’t put tea away when a visitor comes. One brings it out.—I think people ought to know their own minds about that sort of thing, don’t you, Mrs Verity?”
Mrs Verity, as was her wont, gave the matter her weightiest consideration of puckered brow and clasped fingers. “It certainly seems to me of the utmost importance that a man should be aware of his exact state of harmony or disharmony towards the woman in whose company he is compelled to pass at least two-thirds of his normal existence,” she pronounced. “But perhaps he hesitated to express his opinion to you in the fear that it might by some means be carried back to his wife?”
“Not the slightest fear of that—she was there, my dear lady, beside him at the very moment when I said ‘Your wife is an abominable female’—did I say abominable or loathsome? I forget!—‘And all your old pals including myself consider you’ve ruined yourself by marrying her. Throw her off, man, throw her off!’ That was the time for him to agree and get rid of her. Permanently. No woman of spirit could stop with a man aware of the opinion of his pals. But he’s ruined, I tell you. His pluck is broken. He just sniggered and moved away backwards conciliatingly; and She, the hag, the doll, the curly hypocrite, murmured: ‘Come along, Bertie!’—I ask you! ‘Come along, Bertie!’... Antonia, who’s that Florentine page lying over there among the cushions wondering about the handsome young man with hair like the village idiot?”
Deb started at this accurate guess at her reflections, and Cliffe Kennedy grinned at her in excellent fellowship.
Mrs Verity exclaimed: “Forgive me, I have been exceedingly remiss. I should have introduced you before, indeed I should. How could I have neglected to do so?”—though it was hard to say at which point of Mr Kennedy’s speech she could have effected the introduction.
“This is Antonia’s great friend, Deb Marcus. Miss Marcus, Mr Cliffe Kennedy. Cliffe, I will think about the problem of your friend and his wife. I am sure you meant to do good by your intercession. It seems to me a great pity under the circumstances that they should be definitely and not merely experimentally married. And now, since we may not meet again to-day——” She bade good-bye to Deb and Kennedy, patted her daughter’s shoulder, and slipped unobtrusively away.
“Well,” flung out Kennedy to Deb, “was I right about the village idiot?”
She glanced at his golden shock-head, and parried to save herself. “I see no straws spiking in every direction in your hair.”
“And you can’t make village idiots without straw. Good. Nor can you break camels’ backs. Nor tell which way the wind is blowing.”
“Nor eat ice-cream sodas.”