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Properly, the second line should have been: By Bobby Bunkum; but I suppose his ideas ran low, when he reached that point." "I say, Arlt," Bobby suggested; "why don't you write a series of articles on How to Get on in the World?" "They would only take one line: Know Miss Gannion and Miss Van Osdel," Arlt retorted, with unwonted quickness. Bobby shook his head. "No go, Arlt.
"As if I owed a great deal to you." The girlish pink flush rose in Miss Gannion's cheeks. "Thank you, dear boy. But really I have done nothing." Arlt turned his back to the piano and, clasping his hands over his knees, spoke with simple gravity. "Miss Gannion, here in America, I have had three good friends, Mr. Thayer, you, and Miss Van Osdel. Everybody knows what Mr.
Thayer has done to help me; I am the only one who knows about you and Miss Van Osdel, and I know it better and better, the more I learn to understand your American ways. It was not always easy for a woman in society to accept as her friend a stranger musician without reputation and without social backing, to acknowledge him in public and to insist that her friends should acknowledge him.
"Try it again, old man," he said encouragingly. "You'll get the proper range in time." But Mrs. Lloyd Avalons returned to the charge. "Well, as long as you won't come to me, I must seize my chance here, if Miss Van Osdel will excuse me. We are getting up a concert for the benefit of the Allied Day Nurseries, Mr. Arlt.
"I'm not at all certain that I wish to be consistent," Sally asserted. "So glad for your sake!" Bobby returned quickly. Thayer looked up inquiringly. "Because consistent people are such bores, Miss Van Osdel?" "So you are a heretic, too? And then they are so smug." "But there's consistency and consistency," Bobby argued.
I am very sorry; but I shall be unable to accept your invitation." There was no underlying rancor in the slow, deliberate syllables; they were merely the statement of an indisputable fact. Most women would have accepted them in silence. Not so with Mrs. Lloyd Avalons. "But you played for Miss Van Osdel, last week," she persisted. Arlt rose to his feet.
"Yes, I played for Miss Van Osdel, last week, just as I hope to have the pleasure of playing for her many times more in the future. However, that is quite a different matter. Miss Van Osdel and I are very old friends, and it will always be one of my very greatest pleasures to be entirely at her service."
"You also take tea, I think, Mrs. Avalons?" "You'd better," Bobby urged, with inadvertent pointedness. "We were just saying that Miss Van Osdel brews wisdom mingled with her tea." "Bobby!" Sally adjured him, in a horrified whisper; but Mrs. Lloyd Avalons had already turned to Arlt. "I am so glad to meet you here, Mr. Arlt.
"I wish I could think so, Dane; but I am afraid I should only disappoint you," he answered, and his tone was not altogether jovial, as he said it. "I don't expect to be consistent," Sally retorted. "I'm only an ill-assorted snarl of threads ravelled out from my different ancestors." "That's dodging the responsibility, Miss Van Osdel." Bobby lifted an oyster and held it up to view.
As for Sally Van Osdel, she had one attribute of a great general; she knew how to beat a dignified retreat from an awkward situation, and she it was who broke in upon the little pause which followed the introductions. "Your entrance was most dramatic, Mr. Thayer, for your name was just trembling upon our lips. Miss Dane has been asking us if we knew your accompanist, Mr. Arlt."
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