XI.—IN WHICH WE GET INTO THE FLASH AND GLITTER OF HIGH LIFE
NEXT evening Betsey and I went to dinner with Mrs. Moses Fraley, of Terre Haute, at a fashionable hotel. There we saw a show-window in one of the greatest matrimonial department stores in Europe. Buyers and sellers and bought and sold were there in full force to inspect the bargains, and we were able to note reliably the undertone of the market; and our observations had some effect, I believe, on the fortunes of Miss Norris.
Nothing was said of “the count” in our invitation, but we hoped to have at least a look at him. We put on our best clothes, and our plain, agricultural natures were well disguised when the impressive head porter at our destination helped us out of Norris's car and almost touched his forehead on the pavement at sight of us. That bow was easily worth a two-franc piece, and he got it.
“The Yank and his franc are easily parted,” Betsey remarked, as we entered the great whirling door.
We were in the game, and I was firmly resolved to keep pace with our compatriots from Terre Haute for one evening, anyhow. Two more double-franc pieces in the coat-room established my reputation. With a good suit of clothes and the sudden expenditure of two dollars and a half you can acquire a reputation in any European hotel. Reputations are the cheapest things in Europe, but the costs for upkeep are considerable. Every young man in the place was trying to do something for us and I began to feel the rich, blue blood in my veins.
Mrs. Fraley and her niece, in long trains, received and presented us to their guests. Among them was the lady from Flint who had got the cramp in her leg at Hadrian's Villa, and who lived at the same boarding-house with Mrs. Fraley. Her name was Sampf—“Mrs. Sampf,” they called her. I always have to go to my note-book when I try to think of that name. We always refer to her as the lady whose name sounded like boiling mush. There were also a sad but handsome young woman of the name of Rantone, a Minnesota girl who had married an Italian doctor; Mr. Pike, the whiskered lumber king who was studying the history of the world and whose bust we had surveyed in the studio of De Langueville, and a certain young man connected with one of the embassies.
“The count couldn't come,” said Mrs. Fraley. “He wrote that nothing would please him more than to meet Mr. and Mrs. Socrates Pot ter, but that he was, unfortunately, quite ill.”
I did not know until then that these good people had come to meet us.
“Perhaps you'll help us to appraise our loss by giving me his name,” I suggested.