That is how it happened that an hour later a newly-married young couple, under the escort of two young men who were pretty well known around town, were lunching at the Waldorf just as if they had known each other for years.
“You see,” one of the hosts was explaining, “we had an invitation to a wedding out of town to-day and we missed the train. We felt as if we wanted to entertain some one in honor of the event and we thought we would ask you. We want you to be our guests from now until 1 o’clock to-morrow morning——”
The young husband glanced uneasily at his wife and she smiled back reassuringly.
The woman, with that unerring female instinct which is born with all females of the human tribe, understood the situation at a glance and was ready for the lark. Besides, both hosts were good looking and well dressed and her vanity was touched. She was young enough to be natural and old enough to be appreciative. Besides, there were a few healthy drops of sporting blood in her veins, and that tells a good part of the story.
There are cases where details are uninteresting, and while the time from luncheon to near the hour of midnight seemed to the honeymooners one wild carouse yet it was really nothing to those who are familiar with the ways of the world. They had sampled everything within reason from soda to hock, and the happy Freehold boy with the silk lid was willing to walk on his hands if anyone had dared him. He had told everyone he met all he knew and all he ever expected to know. As for the little lady who had been toasted many times as the “blushing bride,” she had suddenly developed sporting proclivities of a rare character, and she squeezed the hands of both of her hosts with equal impartiality.
Confidentially it was rather a dangerous situation, for if the bridegroom had been helped to a few more drinks he wouldn’t have cared whether the place where he was laid away was a bridal couch or the soft side of a board. That was the state of affairs when, calling each other by their first names, so friendly had they become, that they all went up to the apartment of one of the hosts for the wind-up banquet.
“How are you feeling, little sport, getting a head yet?”
“I’m just right, and I’d like to have you for a brother,” she retorted.
“Only a brother?”
“Perhaps I should have said father.”