“Do people know it?”
“Why, of course. Why not?”
“I don’t know,” said Montague. “It sounds a little queer.”
“Nothing of the kind,” said Oliver. “Some of the best people in New York do it. Strangers come to the city, and they want to go to the right places, and they ask me, and I send them. Or take Robbie Walling, who keeps up five or six establishments, and spends several millions a year. He can’t see to it all personally—if he did, he’d never do anything else. Why shouldn’t he ask a friend to attend to things for him? Or again, a new shop opens, and they want Mrs. Walling’s trade for the sake of the advertising, and they offer her a discount and me a commission. Why shouldn’t I get her to try them?”
“It’s quite intricate,” commented the other. “The stores have more than one price, then?”
“They have as many prices as they have customers,” was the answer. “Why shouldn’t they? New York is full of raw rich people who value things by what they pay. And why shouldn’t they pay high and be happy? That opera-cloak that Alice has—Réval promised it to me for two thousand, and I’ll wager you she’d charge some woman from Butte, Montana, thirty-five hundred for one just like it.”
Montague got up suddenly. “Stop,” he said, waving his hands. “You take all the bloom off the butterfly’s wings!”
He asked where they were going that evening, and Oliver said that they were invited to an informal dinner-party at Mrs. Winnie Duval’s. Mrs. Winnie was the young widow who had recently married the founder of the great banking-house of Duval and Co.—so Oliver explained; she was a chum of his, and they would meet an interesting set there. She was going to invite her cousin, Charlie Carter—she wanted him to meet Alice. “Mrs. Winnie’s always plotting to get Charlie to settle down,” said Oliver, with a merry laugh.
He telephoned for his man to bring over his clothes, and he and his brother dressed. Then Alice came in, looking like the goddess of the dawn in the gorgeous rose-coloured gown. The colour in her cheeks was even brighter than usual; for she was staggered to find how low the gown was cut, and was afraid she was committing a faux pas. “Tell me about it,” she stammered. “Mammy Lucy says I’m surely supposed to wear some lace, or a bouquet.”
“Mammy Lucy isn’t a Paris costumier,” said Oliver, much amused. “Dear me—wait until you have seen Mrs. Winnie!”