Part 14 (2/2)

”Why, with pleasure--salt--salt,” said Edith, with a gay and mischievous laugh. ”This man--waiter, waiter--wants some salt to salt down his opinion of women's rights.”

”Good, good!” applauded Mrs. Cobb. ”Now, what are your opinions of women's rights, Mr. Monroe?”

”I am salting them down,” he replied, sadly, as he began to spray most liberally his salad, which looked, before he ceased, as if it would be in a brine of thick salineness. ”My opinion of women is--aside from my mother--that they are a lot of soap bubbles.”

”You bad man,” said Mrs. Cobb, lowering her eyebrows; ”that is no definition. Women's rights--what is your opinion?”

”They haven't any rights, save what the men choose to give them,” he whispered looking at Edith, with as much expression as a monkey.

”You bleak old bachelor,” retorted Mrs. Cobb. ”Edith will never have you for saying that.”

Edith turned a wrathful glance upon Mrs. Cobb, and gave a scornful laugh at the jest. Then she turned to Mr. Monroe, who had ceased in his rapid-fire eating long enough to look at her like a plaster cast might look.

”Miss Edith,” said Jasper Cobb, who had been earnestly engaged with Miss Barton, paying her the closest attention with his palavering nonsense, ”I am jealous of Mr. Monroe.”

”Indeed,” returned Edith.

”I am, indeed,” he answered, and the impropriety of his remark struck Edith's ear discordantly.

”What a great teaser you are, Jasper,” said Mrs. Cobb.

”A chip of the old block,” said Mr. Cobb, smiling at his joke, as he took it to be.

”Jasper does not mean a word of it,” said Mrs. Cobb, at the same time hoping that he did.

”With due consideration for my friend, Mr. Monroe,” said Edith, ”I will turn my attention to him.”

Then Edith summoned up all her latent subst.i.tutes for naturalness, and bore down upon Mr. Monroe with such a load of banter and mirthful sayings that that gentleman eventually smiled, to the surprise of everybody. Then it became alarmingly noticeable that Mr. Monroe was paying close attention to Edith's highly interesting but entirely a.s.sumed form of gabbling--so much so, in fact, that it was feared by Mrs. Cobb once that he was on the point of taking Edith in his unloving embrace, and running away with her. But Mrs. Cobb saved him from this duncely possibility by saying:

”Be careful, Mr. Monroe, or you will do something desperate directly!”

Mr. Monroe quickly recovered himself and became a living sphynx again.

”Hah, Miss Edith,” said Jasper Cobb, catching the trend of things Edithward, ”now, I am jealous.”

Miss Edith turned to him, with pretended hautiness, and should liked to have said, ”Impudence,” but forbore that unlady-like expression in deference to her own good breeding. She was relieved, however, from making any answer to him by Mr. Cobb, who arose at that critical moment and announced, most graciously and grandiloquently, that the table would be cleared of the women and menu to make way for cigars and wine.

All of which orders being carried into execution, as per custom, the waiters proceeded to serve those two refres.h.i.+ng desserts. They sat long over their cigars, and longer over their wine--till the air was an ultramarine blueness, and the men in tipsy joyousness.

Mr. Monroe was very thirsty, it turned out, from the number of gla.s.ses that he drained, which had an happy effect upon him. For, with the disappearance of the wine down his esophagus, came a set grin on his face, akin to the smile of a disgruntled ghost. Young Cobb, aside from smoking enormously, imbibed freely, much against his personal appearance and qualifications to enter much farther into the pleasures of the evening. All the other gentlemen, including old man Cobb, entered into the libations with rare partiality--except Mr. Jarney, who, it was seen, refrained from partic.i.p.ating in the dispatching of the invigorating liquor, a const.i.tutional habit with him. This trait was looked upon by his now inebriating friends as a high breach of etiquette in not sipping wine after breaking bread at the home of a friend, and was an affront not to be condoned on such an occasion. But Mr. Jarney, while not approving of such baccha.n.a.lian practices, as far as he and his family were concerned, looked askance at them, so long as they were confined to others, and he made no protest.

After the free lubrication of their unsettled nerves and muddled heads, the men arose to join the ladies, who in the meantime had dressed for the ball, now to follow.

When all was in readiness and the band had struck up a softly insinuating waltz, Mr. and Mrs. Cobb wheeled out on the floor and glided around the room with the agility of two sixteen-year-olds. Mr. and Mrs.

Jarney came after them, stately and graceful in their evolutions. Then came the ghost--Monroe--looking like a piece of burning asbestos, as a result of the wine, with his arm around the waist of Miss Edith. Then came young Cobb, whispering words of foolishness into the ear of Miss Barton, as they went round and round in a delirious whirl--to him. Then came all the other ladies and gentlemen, the latter suffering wondrously in the advanced stage of booziness. No, we will not cast all the shame upon the men in their journey of giddiness, for some of the bewitching woman, ah, and even unbewitching, too, presumed it their blessed privilege to partake of a little of the tonic of joy, as an equalizer to the wabbling motions of their husbands or friends.

Number after number, in this wise, was pulled off, each time the bibbers adding more and more wine as a wash down after each exhausting exhibition. So in consequence, after awhile, man after man began to fall by the wayside, and call feebly upon the good Samaritan: Bromo-seltzer, or bromo-something else: to keep them in condition to continue the mad seance. But the little imp Wine, once he secrets himself in the corpuscles of the blood, is a pretty difficult being to placate in so short a time. Not satisfied was he in laying hold of the faultless gentlemen in spike-tailed coats and immaculate bosoms, sparkling with all the iridescence of the purchasing power of money, but he sought out some of the decolleted dames and gauzyed damsels, and enveloped them in his opiatic arms. Even Mr. and Mrs. Cobb were not spared from his envelopment; for, after the fourth set, they became so maudlin in their hilarity that the sober servants were called upon to lead them out of the ballroom, from which they went, in a great state of regal debility, into the seclusion of their own bedchamber, there to sleep away their Thanksgiving potation.

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