“Can’t be too careful of the old boiler,” he said apologetically. “If it was stolen I wouldn’t get another one out of dad for a century.”
In the lobby he nodded to the young negro who came to take their coats, with the familiarity of a member, and turned to his companion, who was glancing curiously at the chattering groups of men and girls in evening dress who were in the lobby.
“From the crowd, Tommy, I gather we’ve looked in on some one’s party. Wait, and I’ll see who’s giving it.”
In a tall, loosely hung way, Tommy was rather handsome; distinguished, certainly. He had deep grey eyes, and a way of taking all things with a slow, questioning smile, that either charmed or exasperated. He was very dark; a Southerner; twenty-two perhaps.
The other, short, and sandy-haired, and blue-eyed, carrying himself with that preoccupied air of conscious importance which is so often the aspect of short people, was in excellent contrast. By their oppositeness they set one another off; rather to Tommy’s advantage.
“Grant’s party, for Millicent,” his host said, returning. “Mrs. Grant’s an old social-enemy and friend of mother’s; we’re invited to stay.”
He led the way down a short hall to the right, past parted velvet curtains, toward the source of the music. Before the formidable Mrs. Grant, a matron of the over-stuffed type, he performed the amenities.
“Mrs. Grant, this is Tommy Squire, my roommate at school. Tommy’s from Richmond.”
Mrs. Grant was very happy to meet a friend of Carl Twist’s. Tommy accepted the three longest fingers of the drooping hand which she extended to him with the manner of an operatic duchess, and managed to convey his gratitude for the honor. As a further concession Mrs. Grant propounded the unique theory that winters in the North were apt to be much colder than those in Virginia—“Don’t you find it so, Mr. Squire?” When the two had unanimously ratified her sagacious observation, the audience was over.
The club’s lounge and dining-room had been thrown into one; the tables, later to be drawn out for supper, were massed in a corner, and elaborate decorations festooned the walls. Under the rose and grey of the low-beamed ceiling the whirl and color and indiscriminate noise of unleashed exuberance of the first of the holiday dances throbbed and spun to the music. There were men and girls from the universities, from prep. schools and finishing schools, and a seasoning of those who had graduated or dropped out. Most of them had returned within the week, and each time that the music stopped there were numerous impromptu, frenzied reunions, as friends parted for an age of three and a half months simulated paroxysms of joy at seeing one another, with shrieks and calls and kisses and much waggling hand-shaking—as the sex or the innate histrionics of the participants impelled them.