"Don't think this is the real thing," he explained; "I've had seven years of that in Paris. This is merely a very crass imitation."
"Imitation or not, it's most delightfully absurd and amusing," said she, watching the group nearest her. This consisted of a very short and rotund man with hair a la Paderewski and a frilled evening shirt, a thin man of incredible stature and lank black locks, and a pretty young girl in a tunic, a tam o' shanter, enormous green hairpins, and tiny patent-leather shoes decorated with three inch heels. To her the lank man, who wore a red velvet shirt and a khaki-colored suit reminiscent of Mr. Bernard Shaw, was explaining the difference between syndicalism and trade-unionism in the same conversational tone which men in Lindum had used in describing to Mary the varying excellences of the two local hunts. "I.W.W." and "A.F. of L." fell from his lips as "M.F.H." and "J.P." used to from theirs. The contrast between the two worlds entertained her not a little. She thought all these young people looked clever, though singularly vulgar, and that her old friends would have appeared by comparison refreshingly clean and cultivated, but quite stupid.
"Why, Stefan, are dull, correct people always so clean, and clever and original ones usually so unwashed?" she wondered.
"Oh, the unwashed stage is like the measles," he replied; "you are bound to catch it in early life."
"I suppose that's true. I know even at Oxford the Freshmen go through an utterly ragged and disreputable phase, in which they like to pretend they have no laundry bill."
"Yes, it advertises their emancipation. I went through it in Paris, but mine was a light case."
"And brief, I should think," smiled Mary, to whom Stefan's feline perfection of neatness was one of his charms.
At the hotel, on the other hand, the groups, though equally individual, lacked this harum-scarum quality, and, if occasionally noisy, were clean and orderly.
"Is it because they can afford to dress better?" Mary asked on their next evening there, noting the contrast.
"No," said Stefan. "That velvet shirt cost as much probably as half a dozen cotton ones. These people have more, certainly, or they wouldn't be here--but the real reason is that they are a little older. The other crowd is raw with youth. These have begun to find themselves; they don't need to advertise their opinions on their persons." He was looking about him with quite a friendly eye.