of construction and easy of comprehension.
“Well it made me feel good just looking at him,” declared Miss Kite, the highly coloured. “It was his clothes, I suppose—made me think of Noah and the ark—all that sort of thing.”
“It would be clothes that would make you think—if anything,” drawled the languid Miss Devine. She was a tall, handsome girl, engaged at the moment in futile efforts to recline with elegance and comfort combined upon a horsehair sofa. Miss Kite, by reason of having secured the only easy-chair, was unpopular that evening; so that Miss Devine’s remark received from the rest of the company more approbation than perhaps it merited.
“Is that intended to be clever, dear, or only rude?” Miss Kite requested to be informed.
“Both,” claimed Miss Devine.
“Myself? I must confess,” shouted the tall young lady’s father, commonly called the Colonel, “I found him a fool.”
“I noticed you seemed to be getting on very well together,” purred his wife, a plump, smiling little lady.
“Possibly we were,” retorted the Colonel. “Fate has accustomed me to the society of fools.”
“Isn’t it a pity to start quarrelling immediately after dinner, you two,” suggested their thoughtful daughter from the sofa, “you’ll have nothing left to amuse you for the rest of the evening.”
“He didn’t strike me as a conversationalist,” said the lady who was cousin to a baronet; “but he did pass the vegetables before he helped himself. A little thing like that shows breeding.”
“Or that he didn’t know you and thought maybe you’d leave him half a spoonful,” laughed Augustus the wit.
“What I can’t make out about him—” shouted the Colonel.
The stranger entered the room.
The Colonel, securing the evening paper, retired into a corner. The highly coloured Kite, reaching down from the mantelpiece a paper fan, held it coyly before her face. Miss Devine sat upright on the horse-hair sofa, and rearranged
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