“Personal ambition!” she snapped, and, without waiting to see the pallor which struck his face to stone, she heeled her way out through the mud to her coupé.
CHAPTER X
THE STORM CENTRE OF MAGNETIC ATTRACTION
“Brother Bones,” said Interlocutor Ted Teasdale commandingly, with his knuckles on his right knee and his elbow at the proper angle.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Interlocutor,” replied Willis Cunningham, whose “black-face make-up” seemed marvellously absurd in connection with his brown Vandyke.
“Brother Bones, when does everybody love a storm?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Interlocutor,” admitted Brother Bones Cunningham, touching his kinky wig with the tip of one forefinger. “When does everybody love a storm?”
Interlocutor Ted Teasdale roved his eye over the assemblage, of fifty or more, in his own ballroom, and smiled in a superior fashion. The ebony-faced semicircle of impromptu minstrels, banded together that morning, leaned forward with anticipatory grins. They had heard the joke in rehearsal. It was a corker!
“When it’s a Gail,” he replied, whereat Gail Sargent, at whom everybody looked and laughed, flushed prettily, and the bones and tambos made a flourish, and the Interlocutor announced that the Self Help Glee Club would now sing that entrancing ditty, entitled “Mary Had a Little Calf.”
It was only in the blossom of the evening at Ted Teasdale’s country house, the same being about eleven o’clock, and the dance was still to begin. Lucile Teasdale’s vivid idea for making her house-party notable was to induce their guests to amuse themselves; and their set had depended upon hired entertainers for so long that the idea had all the charm of distinct novelty. There had been an amazingly smart operetta written on the spot by Willis Cunningham, and with musical settings by Arlene Fosland. Rippingly clever thing! “The Tea Room Suffragettes!” Ball afterwards, of course, until four o’clock in the morning. To-night the minstrel show, and a ball; to-morrow night tableaux vivant, and a ball; fancy dress this time, and all costumes to be devised from the materials at hand by the wearer’s own ingenuity. Fine? No end of it! One could always be sure of having a lively time around Lucile and Ted Teasdale and Arly Fosland. Gerald Fosland was at this party. Fine chap, Gerald, and beautifully decent in his attentions to Arly. Pity they were so rotten bored with each other; but there you were! Each should have married a blonde.
Gail Sargent fairly scintillated with enjoyment. She had never attended so brilliant a house-party. Her own set back home had a lot of fun, but this was in some way different. The people were no more clever, but there were more clever people among them; that was it. There had been a wider range from which to pick, which was why, in New York, there were so many circles, and circles within circles.