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Miss Boutts looked at her with positive scorn. "You girls that go to Europe and stay there too long get fearfully behind things. Poker! Monte! We play bridge and five hundred." Then her genuine affection for Isabel overcame her contempt. "We have spoken often of asking you to join the clubs," she added, sweetly. "But there isn't a vacancy at present." "I couldn't think of it.
Dolly Boutts, whom he still admired at a distance, although he fled at her approach, was a bouncing peasant by contrast; and several well-bred and entertaining young women of the same warm hues that he had met during the past few weeks in San Francisco suddenly seemed to be the merest climatic accidents beside this girl who unrolled the pages of California's older past and afforded him a fleeting vision of those lovely doñas and fiery caballeros for whom life was an eternal playground.
Miss Boutts, who was not particularly quick of apprehension, here threw back her head and gave a musical laugh, which was out of tune with her drawling nasal voice and abundant slang. "You innocent!" she cried. "Where have you been? I suppose you have been imagining us at dances and dinners and teas and things. Why, we have only danced twice in two whole years. It's cards, my dear.
Larkin T. Boutts was new to Gwynne, although his status was easily to be inferred from the constant references in the local press. He was a fat little man who sat habitually with a hand on either knee, which he clawed absently both in conversation and thought. Otherwise his attitude was one of extreme repose, even watchfulness.
Boutts, and the Leslies, are well off. But many girls who are in the best society earn their living: typewriters, clerks, book-keepers, and the like. One has carried on her father's drug-store since his death. Most of the young men that could get away have gone, and there are not half a dozen left with any money behind them.
Boutts was too sharp for the law, and all his sins were forgiven him on account of his genuine devotion to Rosewater. Far from battening on her, after the fashion of the San Francisco cormorant, he had never taken a dollar out of her that he had not returned a hundred-fold, and he was the author of much of her wealth.
Gwynne responded with some enthusiasm; for a time there was a broken duet, and then the feminine voice settled down to a steady monologue. Miss Boutts knew that it was an American girl's business to be animated, entertaining, amusing, especially with Englishmen, who hated effort.
The host hastily poured whiskey-and-soda lest he should look haughtily expectant. "It's just this, Mr. Gwynne," began Boutts, in his suave even tones. "We have seen your ads. We know that you contemplate selling off a good part of your ranch Well, there was a buzz round town when those ads were read, and I was not long passing the word that there would be a mass-meeting that night in Armory Hall.
I wonder what it is like to be different from other people. I always feel just like everybody else." "So do I," said Isabel, encouragingly. "It was only circumstances that made me appear different." "But you know so much!" sighed Miss Boutts. "You speak a lot of languages, and you took all the honors at the High School and then all those years in Europe! I wonder Mr.
"This must have cost a pretty penny!" she muttered to Mrs. Wheaton Gwynne was dancing attendance on Miss Boutts once more. "Much money she'll save! One would think this was San Francisco, and some swell house on Nob Hill. I don't believe a thing was cooked in her own kitchen." "I should think not! This supper is from the St. Francis, or The Palace, or The Poodle Dog " Mrs.
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