“Why, the people who have had you, of course! Not luncheon people, not tea people, mind!” Azalea was quite stern. “But the people who have had you for dinner! It will be simple until you have been entertained frequently, and then you will have to sort out members of different sets.”
“I don’t like it,” said Raymond Dilling’s wife. “I don’t want to entertain that way. I tell you, it’s deceitful!”
“Entertaining,” said Azalea, with a suspicion of hardness in her voice, “is an admirable illustration of the ‘eye for an eye’ transaction mentioned in Holy Writ. Only, in the Capital, an astute woman schemes to obtain two eyes for one optic, and a whole set, upper and lower, for the molar she has sacrificed. When she accomplishes this, my dear, then she has achieved real social success. Bismillah!”
CHAPTER 9.
Several circumstances combined to make possible the large and representative crowd that attended Mrs. Raymond Dilling’s first big crush. The day was fine, the season was only beginning so that there were few counter-attractions, and the Parliamentary set, who were hearing with increasing frequency of the fervid young prophet of the prairies, went out of curiosity to see, as Mrs. Lorimer tactfully put it, “What he had married.”
Dilling had already made a strong impression—partly favourable, and partly the reverse. But it was definite in either case.
Lastly, the Hollingsworth house, into which the Dillings had moved, was a landmark which still bequeathed a flavour of by-gone grandeur to its successive tenants, although no member of the illustrious family had lived beneath its roof for close upon half a century. But no matter who lived there, it was a mansion into which one could pass with dignity and a certain satisfaction, secure in the knowledge that even should it be converted into a boarding-house, there would remain the manifest though indefinable air that differentiates the messuages of patricians from the tenements of the proletariat.
That the Hollingsworths’ should be transformed into anything so needful as a private hostelry, however, was almost inconceivable, for Ottawa’s last concern was her housing problem.
Accommodation was so scarce at the seat of Government that many Members began to fear, after a discouraging search, that they would have to stand. Over-furnished rooms, and under-furnished houses were offered at opulent rentals, but of comfortable pensions, there were none. There are but two or three to-day. What solution has been reached, may be attributed to the number of picturesque old residences that have been remodelled and split into half a dozen inconvenient mouse-traps.
Inside, the Hollingsworths’ was a riot of fantastic ugliness. A gaunt reception hall engulfed the visitor and cast him, from beneath a series of grilled oak arches, into a sombre drawing room. One end was bounded by folding doors that resisted all efforts at movement, and beyond, there yawned a portentous bay window that invited invasion by the house next door and reduced the cubic contents of the dining-room. Strange abutments, niches that looked as though they had been designed for cupboards and abandoned before completion, appeared in unsuspected places. Angles were everywhere. The ceilings were lumpy, like the frosting of a birthday cake, and there wasn’t a gracious line to be seen.