She began by dilating upon her pleasure in being home again, and then congratulated her handsome friend, with a touch of sarcasm, upon the overwhelming gayeties of Rosewater.
Miss Boutts stared. "Gayeties?" said she.
"What else? I never knew people so absorbed, although I fail to see why I should be wholly excluded. Or have the fashions changed, and was I expected to call first—"
Miss Boutts, who was not particularly quick of apprehension, here threw back her head and gave a musical laugh, which was out of tune with her drawling nasal voice and abundant slang.
"You innocent!" she cried. "Where have you been? I suppose you have been imagining us at dances and dinners and teas and things. Why, we have only danced twice in two whole years. It's cards, my dear. We are card mad, the whole bunch of us, old and young, women and girls. Mrs. Leslie and Anabel Colton are about the only exceptions, at least in our set. But I fancy the whole town has got it. We play morning, noon, and night—literally. Those who have no servants—and that question gets worse instead of better—don't make their beds for days, and their husbands get dinner at any old hour. Those who have a servant or two belong to six clubs at least. I belong to every one of them, and two meet in the morning."
It had been Isabel's turn to stare. The older people had always played bézique or whist, but rather somnolently of an evening. She wondered if the old gambling spirit had broken out again, and asked if they were playing poker or monté. Miss Boutts looked at her with positive scorn.
"You girls that go to Europe and stay there too long get fearfully behind things. Poker! Monte! We play bridge and five hundred." Then her genuine affection for Isabel overcame her contempt. "We have spoken often of asking you to join the clubs," she added, sweetly. "But there isn't a vacancy at present."
"I couldn't think of it. Chickens and cards don't rhyme. What do you play for—money?"
"No!" The scorn returned to her voice. "We are still too provincial for that. San Francisco is ahead of us there. We don't even have real big prizes—just a dinky little spoon sitting up on the mantel-piece to excite us as if it was a tiara. I've won a whole bunch of them. They're better than nothing and mean a lot of fun. I'm as proud as punch of them."
"And the men?" asked Isabel. Did they play, too? Miss Boutts replied that they were too busy in the daytime, but were asked once a week to a "bang-up" affair. Their other evenings they spent at the lodges—"or any old place," added Miss Boutts, who had no brothers, and a very busy father. When Isabel asked her if she had not the natural yearning of her age and sex for beaux, she shrugged her shoulders and replied: