"Everything from plain poison to prussic acid," Blackie informed him. "The preceding husband of Mrs. Daw was a swell provider."
"You bet he was," agreed Mrs. Daw as she led the way to the dining room and threw open the cupboard of the sideboard. "Harry was a good sport all right, but his stomach gave out."
The sideboard, given over in most apartments to cut glass and other ordinary dining-room adornments, was in this case stocked with fancy bottles of all shapes and colors and sizes, and in the lower part of it was ice.
"Pardon the bartender, mum," observed J. Rufus, his eyes lighting up with the dawning of creative skill as he removed his coat.
Mrs. Daw watched him musingly through the open door of the dining room as he worked deftly among those bottles and utensils.
"He's a good sport all right," she confided to her present husband, and she was still more of that opinion when Wallingford served three tall, thin glasses with sugared edges, crowned with cracked ice and filled with a golden greenish liquid from which projected two straws. One sip and a sigh of satisfaction from both Mr. and Mrs. Daw, and then they drained the glasses.
"Our hero!" declaimed Mrs. Daw, looking up at him in gratitude. "You have saved our lives. Which will you have, Mr. Wallingford, breakfast or lunch?"
By evening she was calling him Jimmie, and any trifle of disapproving impression that Wallingford had at first harbored was gone. As Blackie claimed, she was born to adorn the night and became more beautiful as dusk fell. Perhaps clothes and consummate art in toilet had something to do with this, but before the three had parted in the morning, Wallingford had decided to introduce his wife after all, a matter about which he had been in considerable doubt. Now, however, he was convinced that the lady was thoroughly respectable. No breath of scandal had ever attached itself to her name. She was always off with the old love before she was on with the new, and could hold up her head in any society!
Mrs. Wallingford came to town the next day, and at no time did she share the enthusiasm of these two men for the incomparable Mrs. Daw. There was a striking contrast between the women, and even their beauty was not only of a strikingly different kind but of a strikingly different nature. Mrs. Daw was a flaming poinsettia, Mrs. Wallingford a rose, and the twain were as antagonistic as were their hues of cheek. Mrs. Daw, however, was more at ease, for she was in her natural environment, the niche to which her nature had fashioned her and of which she had made deliberate choice; but Mrs. Wallingford, in spite of her surroundings, had much in her—though she did not recognize it—of the quantities that would go to make up a Lady Godiva. Her proper sphere, one of calm, pure domesticity, she had never known, though she had vaguely yearned for it; but she was adaptable, and, particularly throughout her married life, she had been thrown with all sorts and conditions of chance nomads such as her husband was likely to pick up; so she accepted Mrs. Daw as a matter of course and got on with her without friction. Nevertheless, her face fell a trifle when her husband joyously announced one afternoon that he had just thought up a great stunt—a honeymoon party for the Daws. He had acted the moment the suggestion had come to him. He had already chartered a private car and had given orders to have it stocked with the very best of everything. He had telephoned the Daws. Mrs. Daw had only the day before signed a contract with a leading dramatic producer, but what was a contract?
The next day, in all the luxury that car builders and fitters had yet been able to devise, they started upon a hilarious tour across the continent; but so far as their mode of life and amusement was concerned they might just as well have stayed on Broadway, for their nights were spent in drinking, their mornings in sleep and their afternoons in sobering up, though in all this Mrs. Wallingford held herself as much reserved and aloof as she could without spoiling the content of the others. They were merely moving a section of the rapid hotel life of New York across the country with them, and the only things which made their hours seem different were the constantly changing scenic environment and the sensation of speed. So long as they were moving swiftly they were satisfied, but a slow rate brought forth howls of discontent. It was on a small connecting line in the middle west that this annoyance reached its climax, and after an hour of exceptionally slow travel Wallingford sent for the conductor and put in a vigorous protest. Yes, there was a faster train on that road. Then why hadn't they been attached to that fast train? The conductor did not know. It was orders.