“Can you spare your friend a few moments?” said Mr. Marge to Lucia. “I would be glad to introduce him to some of the gentlemen.”
“You are very kind,” murmured Lucia, who was dying—so she informed herself—to rejoin some of her girl friends and explain the awkward nature of the intrusion. Marge offered Phil his arm, a courtesy the young man did not understand, so he took Phil’s instead, and presented the youth to several gentlemen as an old friend of the family. Soon, however, Marge led Phil into a tiny room at the rear of the hall,—a room nominally the library, the books consisting of a dictionary and a Bible, the greater part of the shelf-space being occupied by pipes, tobacco-boxes, cigar-cases, ash-receivers, and other appurtenances of the vice and comfort of smoking. Placing Phil in a great easy-chair, the back of which hid him from the company, Marge took a cigarette from his own case, which he afterward passed to Phil.
“No small vices,” said he, as Phil declined. “Just as well off, I suppose. As for me,”—here Mr. Marge struck a match,—“I’ve (puff) been acquainted with the weed so long that (puff) I can’t very well snub it when I would.”
“I think nicotine is injurious to the brain, the lungs, and finally to the digestion,” said Phil. “Have you seen Professor Benchof’s analyses? They were printed in the——”
“I may have seen them in print, but I’m sure I passed them,” said Marge, exhaling smoke in such a way that it hid his face for an instant. “I can’t afford to worry myself with information that I’d rather not use.”
“But one’s physique——” said Phil.
“One’s physique becomes quite obliging when it knows what is expected of it.”
Phil mentally sought a way of passing this unexpected obstacle: meanwhile, Marge breathed lazily through his cigarette a moment or two, and then said,—
“Miss Tramlay is a charming girl.”
“Indeed she is,” Phil replied. “If she only were——”