We half-heartedly decline a suggested course, then lightly
accept from sheer ennui, and "life," as I have read in a quite
meritorious poem, "is never the same again." It was thus I now toyed
there with my fate in my hands, as might a child have toyed with a
bauble. I mean to say, I was looking for nothing thick.
"She's wrote a very fancy piece for that newspaper," Cousin Egbert
went on, handing me the sheets of manuscript. Idly I glanced down the
pages.
"Yesterday saw the return to Red Gap of Mrs. Senator James Knox Floud
and Egbert G. Floud from their extensive European tour," it began.
Farther I caught vagrant lines, salient phrases: "--the well-known
social leader of our North Side set ... planning a series of
entertainments for the approaching social season that promise to
eclipse all previous gayeties of Red Gap's smart set ... holding the
reins of social leadership with a firm grasp ... distinguished for her
social graces and tact as a hostess ... their palatial home on Ophir
Avenue, the scene of so much of the smart social life that has
distinguished our beautiful city."
It left me rather unmoved from my depression, even the concluding
note: "The Flouds are accompanied by their English manservant, secured
through the kind offices of the brother of his lordship Earl of
Brinstead, the well-known English peer, who will no doubt do much to
impart to the coming functions that air of smartness which
distinguishes the highest social circles of London, Paris, and other
capitals of the great world of fashion.
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