Which showed that she had a pretty wit, too, as well as a head.
At the table the hosts had multiplied by two and so there were six. The first flash of cocktails set the groom’s head to buzzing a bit and his speech began to be a trifle thick. At the sauterne he had a job to keep his head up straight, and he had no sooner finished his first glass of wine than he excused himself to get a handkerchief. He dropped on a friendly couch in the next room and promptly forgot that he was alive. His wife was no such miserable failure, for she clinked glasses with the rest of them and was entertained so well that it seemed as if she forgot she had ever been married.
As the clock on the mantel struck two she was dancing a hornpipe on that end of the table which had been cleared by the soft-footed Japanese butler, and what was more she was dancing it well, too. The four hosts were applauding and drinking her health as the best little thoroughbred they had ever met, and in each brain there was a wish that she was anything but a bride, for each of these men, from the oldest to the youngest, was in love.
It was a most curious and remarkable state of affairs, and there was a chance here for a break that might spell ruin to someone. Then the patter of the little feet on the tablecloth ceased and she stepped daintily down to chair and floor. The man nearest helped her, and as she alighted he leaned over and kissed her squarely on the lips. The color in her cheeks was accentuated just a trifle as he glanced suddenly around.
“Where’s my husband?” she asked.
“With his toes turned up on the couch in the next room and dead to the world. If he was half the sport and good fellow you are he’d be an ace. You ought to have been born in New York, Chappie, for you belong there.”
“I think I will go and see him, if you will excuse me,” she said very demurely, and then she went out.
The four hosts drank and talked and smoked and all the talk was of the bride, and it was all complimentary, too. When an hour had passed the butler was sent to see if she would return.
She came back all right, smiling, but there was a change.
“I think we ought to go now, but I can’t get him up. He’s not used to this sort of thing, you see, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”