“Pretty well, Sir Nelson,” answered Fair. “I sold out just before the close at two hundred and seventy-five.”
“Then you must have cleared a hundred thousand net?” said Sir Nelson.
“A bit over double that amount, I think my brokers said,” replied Fair, with no more feeling than he would have shown in announcing a change in the weather.
“Hear that, now,” pouted Mrs. March. “Why can’t you gentlemen ever think of the widow and the fatherless when you, as you say, ‘put in’ your friends on such occasions?”
This little lady was by general consent the most charming widow in the world, her brilliant mind, plump person and winsome manner having beguiled no end of confirmed bachelors into forgetting their resolutions—but without success, for Mrs. March remained Mrs. March season after season.
“Ah, my dear Mrs. March,” protested Allyne the incomprehensible, “what heresy! Just fancy what a pity it would be if widows and younger sons and all other picturesque people were to be made commonplace by money. A widow’s charm lies in her delicious appeal to the protection of all men. With a million in the funds, a widow would find no end of chaps asking her to protect them—and so the charm would be gone. And as for us younger sons—well, just contrast that solemn ass, my brother the viscount, and the penniless, the clever, the dashing, the—how shall I do justice to a thing so lovely as I? No, Sir Nelson, if you ever put me into any of your vulgar good things, I’ll cut you, by Jove—and society will owe you a grudge for having robbed it of its chief ornament—a younger son who is a very younger son indeed.”
“I am afraid that Mr. Allyne’s philosophy is too deep for me,” laughed Mrs. Fair, and Travers remarked sweetly, “Allyne, you’re an idiot.”
“But such a blissful idiot,” smilingly went on the very younger son. “Awfully funny, but nobody can ever deny what I say. We pity Mrs. March, the widow, and envy Mrs. Fair, the wife—but, you know, by Jove, I’d turn it the other way about, don’t you know? No offense, Fair—nothing personal. No, my friends, appearances are deceitful. I’ll lay you a thousand guineas that Fair can’t get what he wants with all his Empire shares and the rest of it, whereas I have everything I want, besides several elder brothers that I do not want. I have everything I want, I tell you.”
“Yes,” retorted Mrs. March, “of course you have, since all that you care to have is an absurd idea of your own importance.”
“A hit, a palpable hit!” roared Sir Nelson as they all laughed.