“I told him distinctly by the hour,” a high-pitched, patrician voice floated in from the hall, “and if he doesn’t stop swearing he’ll have to put his pourboire in troches.” Coincident with the remark a fluent outburst of Parisian profanity came wafting in the open windows.
“My dear Ned,” said Mrs. Van Velt, the owner of the patrician voice, appearing in the doorway; “would you mind sending some one to chloroform my cabby? The more Carol argues with him, the more vocal he becomes. He seems to think that they also swear who only sit and wait.”
Mrs. Van Velt was a dowager unmistakably American.
She appeared to have been poured into her black satin gown at some abnormally high temperature and at a calculation perilously close. Her gray pompadour strained back from her high forehead in an apparent endeavor to oust her bonnet as an insolent trespasser on its private domain, but the bonnet, a black octopus with an intelligent jetty eye, wound two narrow black velvet tentacles firmly beneath Mrs. Van Velt’s double chin, and triumphed calmly.
“You go, Bobbins,” said Carrington, gayly. “Mrs. Van Velt, may I present Mr. Parker? Chloroforming cabbies is one of his specialties. You may be sure that it will be painless and thorough.”
“And bring back my daughter, Mr. Parker,” said Mrs. Van Velt, as placidly as though she had said spectacles or handkerchief. The obliging young knight was already half way to the door. “Carol thought she ought to argue it out with him; and as she couldn’t understand his French, and he couldn’t understand hers, it seemed perfectly safe.”
She laughed good-humoredly.
“That’s a nice-looking boy, Ned,” she said, as the subject of her remark disappeared. “Who is he, and how did he get such a remarkable name?”
“Bobbins?” said Carrington. “Oh, he’s a trump. His father is the inventor—no, his grandfather—of Parker’s Peerless Sewing Machine. You know all the advertisements say: ‘Observe the bobbin. So simple, a child can work it.’ And Robert the Third is such a generous chap, he’s an awfully easy mark. So—Bobbins.”
His hands turned palms upward in an explanatory gesture.