Here will be no discussion of the vulgar matter of markets, staples, and prices, such as we perforce endured through the overwined and too-abundant repast of Higbee. Instead of learning what beef on the hoof brings per hundred-weight, f.o.b. at Cheyenne, we shall here glean at once the invaluable fact that while good society in London used to be limited to those who had been presented at court, the presentations have now become so numerous that the limitation has lost its significance. Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan thus discloses, as if it were a trifle, something we should never learn at the table of Higbee though we ate his heavy dinners to the day of ultimate chaos. And while we learned at that distressingly new table that one should keep one's heifers and sell off one's steer calves, we never should have been informed there that Dinard had just enjoyed the gayest season of its history under the patronage of this enterprising American; nor that Lady de Muzzy had opened a tea-room in Grafton Street, and Cynthia, Marchioness of Angleberry, a beauty-improvement parlour on the Strand "because she needs the money."
"Lots of 'em takin' to trade nowadays; it's a smart sayin' there now that all the peers are marryin' actresses and all the peeresses goin' into business." Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan nodded little shocks of brilliance from her tiara and hungrily speared another oyster.
"Only trouble is, it's such rotten hard work collectin' bills from their intimate friends; they simply won't pay."
Nor at the barbaric Higbee's should we have been vouchsafed, to treasure for our own, the knowledge that Mrs. Gwilt-Athelstan had merely run over for the cup-fortnight, meaning to return directly to her daughter, Katharine, Duchess of Blanchmere, in time for the Melton Mowbray hunting-season; nor that she had been rather taken by the new way of country life among us, and so tempted to protract her gracious sojourn.
"Really," she admits, "we're comin' to do the right thing over here; a few years were all we needed. Hardly a town-house to be opened before Thanksgivin', I understand; and down at the Hills some of the houses will stay open all winter. It's coachin', ridin', and golf and auto-racin' and polo and squash; really the young folks don't go in at all except to dance and eat; and it's quite right, you know. It's quite decently English, now. Why, at Morris Park the other day, the crowd on the lawn looked quite like Ascot, actually."
Nor could we have learned in the hostile camp the current gossip of Tuxedo, Meadowbrook, Lenox, Morristown, and Ardsley; of the mishap to Mrs. "Jimmie" Whettin, twice unseated at a recent meet; of the woman's championship tournament at Chatsworth; or the good points of the new runner-up at Baltusrol, daily to be seen on the links. Where we might incur knowledge of Beaumont "gusher" or Pittsburg mill we should never have discovered that teas and receptions are really falling into disrepute; that a series of dinner-dances will be organised by the mothers of debutantes to bring them forward; and that big subscription balls are in disfavour, since they benefit no one but the caterers who serve poor suppers and bad champagne.
Mrs. takes only Scotch whiskey and soda.
"But I'm glad," she confides to Horace Milbrey on her left, "that you haven't got to followin' this fad of havin' one wine at dinner; I know it's English, but it's downright shoddy."
Her host's eyes swam with gratitude for this appreciation.
"I stick to my peg," she continued; "but I like to see a Chablis with the oysters and good dry sherry with the soup, and a Moselle with the fish, and then you're ready to be livened with a bit of champagne for the roast, and steadied a bit by Burgundy with the game. Phim sticks to it, too; tells me my peg is downright encouragement to the bacteria. But I tell him I've no quarrel with my bacteria. 'Live and let live' is my motto, I tell him,—and if the microbes and I both like Scotch and soda, why, what harm. I'm forty-two and not so much of a fool that I ain't a little bit of a physician. I know my stomach, I tell him."