With Edge Tools Part 6

"No; it is quite a mistake, I a.s.sure you," he replied. "I will not be so vulgarly exact next time."

"It is a provincialism quite permissible in the West," said Marion.

"Indeed! But I have not yet said good afternoon," replied Duncan; "have you recovered from the dissipation of last evening?"

"Quite."

"And you, Miss Moreland?"

"Look at her cheeks, Mr. Grahame," interjected Marion.

"I see it is needless to ask about your health, Miss Moreland, but I trust I may say I admire your snow costume."

"You must have a fondness for brilliant colors," said Florence.

"Decidedly; shades and tints were made for funerals and frowns," he replied.

"I don't like to interrupt," interposed Marion hurriedly, "but I fear it is time for Mr. Grahame and me to be going."

"Are you not to accompany us, Miss Moreland?" said Duncan.

"Not in this costume, certainly," laughed Florence.

"Then I shall say _au revoir_."

"Where am I to be taken?" said Duncan, as he and Marion descended the steps of the house.

"To meet my most bitter enemy, Mrs. McSeeney," she replied.

"I admire your courage," he said.

"O, there is no danger of bodily harm, as we are quite on speaking terms; a sort of armed neutrality, you know."

"Am I to be used as an offensive or a defensive weapon?" Duncan asked.

"Neither; I shall use you as a flag of truce; but whatever happens don't you dare to say she is good looking or brilliant."

"I promise," he answered, "but please tell me who she is and what she is."

"You ought to know her; she is a New Yorker,--at least she was three years ago--her husband is the president of an elevated railway company and made her come here to live. She hates Chicago, and takes her revenge by saying disagreeable things about it. For some reason she has singled me out as the particular object of her antipathy and you can imagine there is no love lost between us. But here we are at her door, so I can't tell you any more."

They had reached an awning-covered doorway where numerous carriages were arriving and depositing their occupants. They ascended the steps and were ushered into a crowded room where a well dressed throng were jostling about and trying to keep off one another's toes. Near the door Mrs. McSeeney was undergoing the laborious experience of greeting her friends, while about the room Mrs. n.o.body could be heard cackling loudly and Mrs. Somebody peeping meekly, while Mr. Smart was smirking and Mr.

Plain was awkwardly striving to interest ugly Miss Croesus. It was a prattling, garrulous society. The world over it is the same, differentiated by race and place, perhaps, but still society.

Duncan was taken about and introduced to scores of people whose names he did not even hear. A smile here and a word there was all he had time for, but he managed to meet all "the people one should know," and, being a new man, caused a flutter of expectation among the women. "Who is he?"

"What is he?" "Where is he from?" were the questions asked by all, but they scarcely received a satisfactory answer before Marion hurried Duncan into an adjoining room where numerous pretty girls were dispensing that universal anodyne of modern life, tea. What should we moderns do without tea? It is the prop of society, and without this precious Chinese plant we might still be cupping the sack, and beating our wives between the draughts. In fact a noted moralist has said that "tea has checked our boisterous revels, raised women to a new position, refined manners, and softened the character of men." Perhaps! but let a man with a full cup of tea, and the spoon balanced on the edge of the saucer, try to rise from a low chair and shake hands; then ask him what he thinks about the effect of tea on a man's character.

After responding scores of times to the question, "How do you like Chicago?" with the reply, "I don't know," and after answering quite as frequently and in the same manner the question, "How long do you expect to remain here?" Duncan was finally rescued by Marion Sanderson and taken away.

"You don't often have strangers here, do you?" Duncan gasped when they were outside. "I seem as much of a curiosity as a white man on the Congo."

"Not quite so bad as that," Marion laughed, "though I must confess a new man is an attraction here, especially at a tea, where there are at least two women to every one of the other s.e.x."

"I suppose the natives are frightened away."

"No, you wretch, they are all in business."

"Lucky beggars."

Marion gave him a side glance intended to be annihilating, and silently walked the few remaining steps. When they reached her door she stopped and said, somewhat coldly: "Won't you come in, Mr. Grahame?"

"I certainly will, as I cannot leave with the mercury of your manners so low."

"You surely do not fancy that you can make it rise."

"I do," he said confidently.

Marion looked at him scornfully, but it was an a.s.sumed scorn; as to herself she admitted a fondness for a.s.surance like Duncan's. Florence Moreland would have called it presumption, but Marion felt that it indicated a strong nature worthy of careful a.n.a.lysis. Her manner was often the navete of inexperience. She fancied that she knew the world, but her knowledge was theoretically culled from her yellow-covered romances. She frequently allowed men a freedom of speech which might be misunderstood at times, and excused herself by the thought that such carelessness became a woman of the world. She courted admiration because she felt it to be her due, and in her search for experiences of the world she often displayed an artlessness which was singularly liable to be misinterpreted by the men with whom she came in contact.

Just inside the door on the right of the hall was a wee room decorated in _Louis Quinze_ style, and into this they went. Delicate and cozy, with a polished floor, a leopard's skin rug, soft tinted walls, white and gold woodwork, a tiny open fire, a brocade screen, a chair or two and a tete-a-tete seat,--it was, in fact, a delightful expression of Marion's taste.

"Charming," said Duncan as he sat down opposite Marion on the tete-a-tete and looked about him.

"I am glad something pleases you," she replied as she threw aside her jacket. "Your a.s.surance amazes me," she continued. "Last night you told me you had been about collecting bits of gossip about me in order to understand my character, and now you coolly inform me that you are capable of influencing my feelings. I ought to detest you."

Duncan silently looked with his large, grey eyes into her face for a moment and then said, "I wish you would."

"Why?" she questioned wonderingly.

"Because we might end by being friends."

"A repellent manner of attracting, certainly," she replied.

"Exactly! kindred natures always repel one another with a force equal to their subsequent attraction."

"That sounds like a proposition in physics."

"In metaphysics, perhaps," he answered. "It means that if we first quarrel we shall eventually become sympathetic friends."

"Polemical enemies, I should say," Marion replied sharply.

"Why?"

"Because I am not willing to admit I am of so changeable a nature," she replied.

"A mediocre nature will never change; an uncommon one invariably does,"

he said confidently.

"Another slur."