“Yes,” he said, “we can’t live on ideals,” and I, remembering, hastened to change the conversation.
Since then I have met Pyramids in the rooms of many friends of mine. They give him different names, but I am sure it is the same cat, I know those green eyes. He always brings them luck, but they are never quite the same men again afterwards.
Sometimes I sit wondering if I hear his scratching at the door.
THE MINOR POET’S STORY
“It doesn’t suit you at all,” I answered.
“You’re very disagreeable,” said she, “I shan’t ever ask your advice again.”
“Nobody,” I hastened to add, “would look well in it. You, of course, look less awful in it than any other woman would, but it’s not your style.”
“He means,” exclaimed the Minor Poet, “that the thing itself not being pre-eminently beautiful, it does not suit, is not in agreement with you. The contrast between you and anything approaching the ugly or the commonplace, is too glaring to be aught else than displeasing.”
“He didn’t say it,” replied the Woman of the World; “and besides it isn’t ugly. It’s the very latest fashion.”
“Why is it,” asked the Philosopher, “that women are such slaves to fashion? They think clothes, they talk clothes, they read clothes, yet they have never understood clothes. The purpose of dress, after the primary object of warmth has been secured, is to adorn, to beautify the particular wearer. Yet not one woman in a thousand stops to consider what colours will go best with her complexion, what cut will best hide the defects or display the advantages of her figure. If it be the fashion, she must wear it. And so we have pale-faced girls looking ghastly in shades suitable to dairy-maids, and dots waddling about in costumes fit and proper to six-footers. It is as if crows insisted on wearing cockatoo’s feathers on their heads, and rabbits ran about with peacocks’ tails fastened behind them.”