The solo of the musicale had just ended. People were thronged about the artiste, and others were congratulating Madame Choudey on her absolute success in assembling talent.
“All celebrities, my lad,” remarked Fitzgerald Delaven as he looked around. The Delavens and the McVeighs had in time long past some far-out relationship, and on the strength of it the two young men, meeting thus in a foreign country, became at once friends and brothers;––“all celebrities and no one so insignificant as ourselves in sight. Well, 4 now!––when one has to do the gallant to an ugly woman it is a compensation to know she is wondrous wise.”
“That depends on the man who is doing the gallant,” returned the young officer, “I have not yet got beyond the point where I expect them all to be pretty.”
“Faith, Lieutenant, that is because your American girls are all so pretty they spoil you!––and by the same token your mother is the handsomest woman in the room.”
The tall young fellow glanced across the chattering groups to where the handsomest woman was amusing herself.
She certainly was handsome––a blonde with chestnut hair and grey eyes––a very youthful looking mother for the young officer to claim. She met his glance and smiled as he noticed her very courtier-like attendant of the moment, and raised his brows quizzically.
“Yes, I feel that I am only a hanger-on to mother since we reached France,” he confessed. “My French is of the sort to be exploited only among my intimates, and luckily all my intimates know English.”
“Anglo-Saxon,” corrected Delaven, and Lieutenant McVeigh dropped his hand on his friend’s shoulder and laughed.
“You wild Irishman!––why not emphasize your prejudices by unearthing the Celtic and expressing yourself in that?”
“Sure, if I did I should not call it the Irish language,” retorted the man from Dublin.