"H'm!" she said, deliberately; "I see now why you moved. I don't blame you. I'm trying to get along, too. We're both in the same boat."
Ogden rose.
"What else is there?" she asked herself, looking over other columns. "Here's a marriage; it's in Milwaukee. Don't know whether it's a society item or not. Who are they?—J. Russell Vibert is the man, and Mary Adelaide Brainard is the woman. Both of Chicago—know 'em?" Ogden sat down suddenly.
She eyed him curiously.
"That's the first sign I've seen that you was willing to stay a single minute longer than you had to. You can go now, whenever you want. We've got to clean up. So long!"
[VI]
Ogden had been balked in his first social advance by the inconsiderate and unwarranted demands of the Brainards. He failed on Proposition No. I., but its attendant corollary he disposed of after the proper interval. He had missed the dinner, but he accomplished the dinner call.
He was moving around his room in his shirtsleeves; he had the leisurely air of one whose social orbit was so small as to involve no relations with the courses of cabs and of street-cars. To set himself right with the Floyds he had but to step around the corner.
His room was rather small and cramped, but he had preferred indifferent accommodations in a good house to good accommodations in an indifferent house—just as he would have chosen an indifferent house in a good neighborhood to a better house in a poorer one. His quarters, however, were well enough for a single young man of moderate pretensions. He had space for a three-quarter bed, a bureau, a wash-stand which displayed a set of pink-flowered crockery and two towels, a cane-seated chair, and a pair of book-shelves on the wall. And by means of a good deal of dexterous manoeuvring he contrived to extract some comfort from an undersized rocker. His decorations were principally photographs, which showed to the extent common under the circumstances. Some of these were grouped in twos and threes, in frames faced with Chinese silk; they helped to achieve the disordered and over-crowded effect that the present taste in house-furnishing aims at, and can always accomplish in a back hall bedroom.