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"Well, then, I'll bet it was the hot water. Why weren't you at Mrs Peagrim's party last night?" "It would take too long to explain all my reasons, but one of them was that I wasn't invited. How did it go off?" "Splendidly. Freddie's engaged!" Wally lowered his coffee cup. "Engaged! You don't mean what is sometimes slangily called bethrothed?" "I do. He's engaged to Nelly Bryant.
Brewster was to be seen with his bride frequently beneath Mrs Peagrim's roof. Against the higher strata of Bohemia Mrs Peagrim had no prejudice at all. Quite the reverse, in fact. She liked the society of those whose names were often in the papers and much in the public mouth. It seemed to Otis Pilkington, in short, that Love had found a way.
I thought Freddie must have told you." "In the chorus!" Derek stammered. "I thought you were here as a guest of Mrs Peagrim's." "So I am, like all the rest of the company." "But . . . But . . ." "You see, it would be bound to make everything a little difficult," said Jill. Her face was grave, but her lips were twitching.
Well, what I am trying to point out is that one of these days one of these old oysters will have a fleeting moment of human pity and disgorge some tip on which I can act. It is that reflection that keeps me so constantly at Mrs Peagrim's house." Uncle Chris shivered slightly. "A fearsome woman, my dear! Weighs a hundred and eighty pounds and as skittish as a young lamb in springtime!
And yet, as she leaned back in her seat, her heart was dancing in time to the dance-music of Mrs Peagrim's hired orchestra. It puzzled Jill. And then, quite suddenly yet with no abruptness or sense of discovery, just as if it were something which she had known all along, the truth came upon her. It was Wally, the thought of Wally, the knowledge that Wally existed, that made her happy.
He was humming a gay snatch from the lighter music of the 'nineties. Up on the roof of his apartment, far above the bustle and clamor of the busy city, Wally Mason, at eleven o'clock on the morning after Mrs Peagrim's bohemian party, was greeting the new day, as was his custom, by going through his ante-breakfast exercises.
Do you realize that at houses like Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim's I am meeting men all the time who have only to say one little word to make me a millionaire? They are fat, gray men with fishy eyes and large waistcoats, and they sit smoking cigars and brooding on what they are going to do to the market next day. If I were a mind-reader I could have made a dozen fortunes by now.
And think what it would cost." This was a false step. Some of the reverence left Mrs Peagrim's voice, and she spoke a little coldly. A gay and gallant spender herself, she had often had occasion to rebuke a tendency to over-parsimony in her nephew. "We must not be mean, Otie!" she said. Mr Pilkington keenly resented her choice of pronouns. "We" indeed! Who was going to foot the bill?
'A little bird whispers to me that there were great doings last night on the stage of the Gotham Theatre after the curtain had fallen on "The Rose of America" which, as everybody knows, is the work of Mrs Peagrim's clever young nephew, Otis Pilkington." Mrs Peagrim shot a glance at her clever young nephew, to see how he appreciated the boost, but Otis' thoughts were far away once more.
I am no physician myself, I speak as a layman, but it acts on the red corpuscles of the blood . . ." Mrs Peagrim's face was stony. She had not spoken before, because he had given her no opportunity, but she spoke now in a hard voice. "Major Selby!" "Mrs Peagrim?" "I am not interested in patent medicines!" "One can hardly call Nervino that," said Uncle Chris reproachfully.
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