“Then she is a joy forever!”
“Wonderful staying power for a filly of her age, anyhow!”
From a typical, if not very remarkable, group of alleged men of the world, surrounding the quaint and capacious punch-bowl at a brilliant society event, came this small-shot of repartee. None of the speakers had been very long out of their teens; all of them were familiar ingredients of that cream-nougat compound, called society.
Mr. de Silva Street was of the harmless blonde and immaculate linen type. He was invited everywhere for his present boots, and well-received for his expectant bonds; his sole and responsible ancestor having “fought in his corner” with success, in more than one of the market battles for the belt.
Mr. Wetherly Gage had glory enough with very young belles and tenacious marriageable possibilities, in being society editor of Our Planet; while Mr. Trotter Upton had owned more horses and been more of a boon to sharp traders than any man of his years in the metropolis. A brief young man, with ruddy, if adolescent, moustache apparently essaying the ascent of a nose turned up in sympathetic hue, his red hair was cut in aggressive erectile fashion, which emphasized the soubriquet of “Indian Summer,” given him by the present unconscious subject of the critical trilogy.
“But remember, Trotter, she is my pet partner,” simpered Mr. Street at the shapely back disappearing down the hallway; and he caressed where his blond moustache was to be.
“And might have been of your—mother’s,” added Mr. Gage, with the lonesome titter that illustrated all of his acidulous jokelets.
“Remember she is a lady, and a guest of your host besides,” chimed in a tall, dark man, as he joined the group. The voice was perfectly quiet; but there seemed discomforting magnetism in the glance he rested on one after the other, as he filled a glass and raised it to handsome, but firm-set lips.
The three typical beaux of an abnormal civilization shifted position uneasily. Trotter Upton pulled down his cuffs, and laboriously admired the horse-shoe and snaffle ornamenting their buttons, as he answered: