They rose from the table and ascended to the drawing-room, and there the merriment became more furious still. For Mr. Wellcome’s eyes fell on the whatnot with the photographs of Miss Addams’s “grandchildren,” and the seed of an idea sprang into being in his mind. It grew; it blossomed; it spread into the Rose of Eugenics itself. Mr. Wellcome approached Amory and Cosimo. He was perhaps just slightly drunk. His fingers moved lovingly on Cosimo’s biceps, and passed to his pectoral muscles: his other hand was out, almost as if he would have done the same to Amory: and then he gave them, so to speak, their certificate of physical fitness. Noisily he bade Cosimo kiss Amory there and then.
“Be a man ... kiss her, damme!” he cried, a forcible hand on each; and Amory dropped her lids....
But Cosimo, who was there to see others make exhibitions of themselves but not to make one of himself, hung reluctantly back. But the irresistible Wellcome dragged them both forward again. There was no help for it, and so, knocking his head against Amory’s, he gave her a stage kiss only, which, of course, in this tale of Two Kisses, does not count.
“That’s the style!” cried Mr. Wellcome heartily, deceived by appearances. “Hoooosh!... Short head!—Hi, Bonzoline ... what’s your name ... Lorenzo! Hurry up with them liqueurs, and then go downstairs, and feel in the right-hand pocket of my overcoat, and you’ll find a bundle of toothpicks—and hi!—see whether my Missis has changed the boy yet ... I want to show ’em his legs, tell her.... Talk about ‘legs’!... But you’ll see....”
They had seemed to be merry up to then; but all agreed afterwards that only with the bringing up of the coffee and liqueurs and toothpicks did what might be called the real merriment begin.
At six o’clock that evening Amory and Cosimo took tea in the studio in Cheyne Walk and compared notes of the events of the day. Cosimo was ecstatic. He had not believed such things existed. Amory’s utterances, too, were as breathless and explosive as his own, but seemed somehow to lack ring. A close observer might have supposed her to be acting a brightness. Then for the twentieth time Cosimo guffawed.
“But you lost your bet, Amory—he didn’t say, ‘May all your troubles be little ones!’”
“But he showed us the baby’s legs.”
“I admit he did that. That was rather beyond rubies.”