“Cream or lemon, Mr. Butterfield?” called Miss Dixon from the other side of the room.
“Yes, if you please,” I answered absently, while Miss Dixon looked a deprecating query as to when I _should_ be sensible. I roused, and turned to Mrs. Loring Chatterton.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “I told him I shouldn’t want him this afternoon, so he said he would count the dreary hours till joy returned. I expect he went to count them at some club.”
“Loring always was ardent,” I remarked, looking meditatively into my cup. “I seem to remember that kind of thing from Loring before. Long before you knew him, Mrs. Chatterton.”
“Nothing, my dear Mrs. Chatterton,” I replied. “Nothing out of the way. But you don’t suppose that Loring had the good fortune to happen on the perfect gem without--what shall I say?--preliminary prospecting?”
Mrs. Chatterton and I are old friends. She laughed.
“Do you think you can make me inquisitive, Mr. Butterfield? I know all about that. Why, I made Loring tell me every----”
“Then there is nothing more to say,” I answered. “Loring is my friend--he has claims upon me. He has, doubtless, given himself quite away, and half his bachelor friends into the bargain. I think I see him doing it. Isn’t that a pretty gown Carrie is wearing? I chose it for her.”
“Loring told me a great deal,” said Mrs. Chatterton musingly.
“The buttons are from her grandmother’s wedding-gown.”
“And he was so clumsy and boyish,” she continued.
“Anyway,” Mrs. Loring went on, “I don’t think it fair. Men have half a dozen flirtations before they are married their wives know nothing about.”
“_Some_ women, Mr. Butterfield, may not be scrupulous. But----”
The unfinished sentence was a _résume_ of female virtue since the days of Penelope.
“What are you two so interested in?” cried Mrs. Carmichael from a remote sofa. I had just caught her eye.
Mrs. Loring placed her hand beseechingly on my sleeve, but I hardened my heart.
“We were recalling the time, Mrs. Kit,” I replied, “before your several husbands were enticed from the liberty of bachelor life; we were commenting on the change in them.”
“_You_ should be able to appreciate the difference, Mr. Butterfield,” returned Mrs. Carmichael. “You are just where they left you years and years ago.”