"You have known him a long time, I suppose?" asked Varney.
"Yes," she laughed, "but he has known me longer—ever since I was a very little girl. That is why he calls me by my name, which gives him a great moral advantage. I call him Mister because I didn't know him when he was a very little boy. I have figured it all out, and I couldn't have, because he was thirteen when I was born. Besides, you can't begin to know people till you have reached a certain age. Can you?"
"Not to say know, I should think."
"Say six," said Miss Carstairs. "That's liberal, I think. Well, he was nineteen then, and I never even saw him till seven years afterwards, anyway. That made him twenty-six, which was much too late. Now he says that I should call him by his name, but of course I'm not going to do it."
"It is hard to change an old habit in a thing like that."
"Oh, I don't mind the hardness of it. But whoever heard of calling a
Mayor by his first name? Call a Mayor Pinky! The thought is ridiculous.
Isn't it, Mr. Hare?"
But Hare was engrossed with a conversation of his own, now turned upon economic lines.
"Everything in the world that goes up must come down," he was saying didactically, "except prices. They alone defy the laws of gravity."
Peter challenged the aphorism, wordily. Mrs. Marne smiled at Mary across the flower-sweet table.
"No," answered Hare presently. "Money isn't everything, but it is most. It makes the mare go; also the nightmare. It talks, it shouts, and in the only language that needs no interpreter. I may describe it, without fear of contradiction, as the Esperanto of commerce."