There was a Van
Dresser pride, but there was also a Van Dresser heart. She must know
for certain whether or not he had forgotten.
"Ah, well, Teddy," she said, with a fine assumption of polite
interest, "it's lonely down here; you're longing to get back to the
old life--to polo and lobsters and theatres and balls."
"Never cared much for balls," said Teddy virtuously.
"You're getting old, Teddy. Your memory is failing. Nobody ever knew
you to miss a dance, unless it occurred on the same night with another
one which you attended. And you showed such shocking bad taste, too,
in dancing too often with the same partner. Let me see, what was that
Forbes girl's name--the one with wall eyes--Mabel, wasn't it?"
"No; Adele. Mabel was the one with the bony elbows. That wasn't wall
in Adele's eyes. It was soul. We used to talk sonnets together, and
Verlaine. Just then I was trying to run a pipe from the Pierian
spring."
"You were on the floor with her," said Octavia, undeflected, "five
times at the Hammersmiths'."
"Hammersmiths' what?" questioned Teddy, vacuously.
"Ball--ball," said Octavia, viciously. "What were we talking of?"
"Eyes, I thought," said Teddy, after some reflection; "and elbows."
"Those Hammersmiths," went on Octavia, in her sweetest society
prattle, after subduing an intense desire to yank a handful of
sunburnt, sandy hair from the head lying back contentedly against the
canvas of the steamer chair, "had too much money.
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