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amused. “But don’t you think you’re better looking than your
cousin,” she went on sharply and even commandingly.
“Some people think you are.”
Although a little staggered and yet flattered by this question
which propounded what he might have liked to believe, and
although intrigued by this girl’s interest in him, still Clyde
would not have dreamed of venturing any such assertion
even though he had believed it. Too vividly it brought the
aggressive and determined and even at times revengeful-
looking features of Gilbert before him, who, stirred by such
a report as this, would not hesitate to pay him out.
“Why, I don’t think anything of the kind,” he laughed.
“Honest, I don’t. Of course I don’t.”
“Oh, well, then maybe you don’t, but you are just the same.
But that won’t help you much either, unless you have money
—that is, if you want to run with people who have.” She
looked up at him and added quite blandly. “People like
money even more than they do looks.”
What a sharp girl this was, he thought, and what a hard,
cold statement. It cut him not a little, even though she had
not intended that it should.
But just then Sondra herself entered with some youth whom
Clyde did not know—a tall, gangling, but very smartly-
dressed individual. And after them, along with others,
Bertine and Stuart Finchley.
“Here she is now,” added Gertrude a little spitefully, for she
resented the fact that Sondra was so much better-looking
than either she or her sister, and that she had expressed an
interest in Clyde. “She’ll be looking to see if you notice how
pretty she looks, so don’t disappoint her.”
The impact of this remark, a reflection of the exact truth,
was not necessary to cause Clyde to gaze attentively, and
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even eagerly. For apart from her local position and means
and taste in dress and manners, Sondra was of the exact
order and spirit that most intrigued him—a somewhat
refined (and because of means and position showered
upon her) less savage, although scarcely less self-centered,
Hortense Briggs. She was, in her small, intense way, a
seeking Aphrodite, eager to prove to any who were
sufficiently attractive the destroying power of her charm,
while at the same time retaining her own personality and
individuality free of any entangling alliance or compromise.
However, for varying reasons which she could not quite
explain to herself, Clyde appealed to her. He might not be
anything socially or financially, but he was interesting to her.
Hence she was now keen, first to see if he were present,
next to be sure that he gained no hint that she had seen
him first, and lastly to act as grandly as possible for his
benefit—a Hortensian procedure and type of thought that
was exactly the thing best calculated to impress him. He
gazed and there she was—tripping here and there in a filmy
chiffon dance frock, shaded from palest yellow to deepest
orange, which most enhanced her dark eyes and hair. And
having exchanged a dozen or more “Oh, Hellos,” and
references with one and another to this, that and the other
local event, she at last condescended to evince awareness
of his proximity.
“Oh, here you are. You decided to come after all. I wasn’t
sure whether you would think it worth while. You’ve been
introduced to everybody, of course?” She looked around as
much as to say, that if he had not been she would proceed
to serve him in this way. The others, not so very much
impressed by Clyde, were still not a little interested by the
fact that she seemed so interested in him.
“Yes, I met nearly everybody, I think.”
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“Except Freddie Sells. He came in with me just now. Here
you are, Freddie,” she called to a tall and slender youth,
smooth of cheek and obviously becurled as to hair, who
now came over and in his closely-fitting dress coat looked
down on Clyde about as a spring rooster might look down
on a sparrow.
“This is Clyde Griffiths, I was telling you about, Fred,” she
began briskly. “Doesn’t he look a lot like Gilbert?”
“Why, you do at that,” exclaimed this amiable person, who
seemed to be slightly troubled with weak eyes since he
bent close. “I hear you’re a cousin of Gil’s. I know him well.
We went through Princeton together. I used to be over here
before I joined the General Electric over at Schenectady.
But I’m around a good bit yet. You’re connected with the
factory, I suppose.”
“Yes, I am,” said Clyde, who, before a youth of obviously so
much more training and schooling than he possessed, felt
not a little reduced. He began to fear that this individual
would try to talk to him about things which he could not
understand, things concerning which, having had no
consecutive training of any kind, he had never been
technically informed.
“In charge of some department, I suppose?”
“Yes, I am,” said Clyde, cautiously and nervously.
“You know,” went on Mr. Sells, briskly and interestingly,
being of a commercial as well as technical turn, “I’ve always
wondered just what, outside of money, there is to the collar
business. Gil and I used to argue about that when we were
down at college. He used to try to tell me that there was
some social importance to making and distributing collars,
giving polish and manner to people who wouldn’t otherwise
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have them, if it weren’t for cheap collars. I think he musta
read that in a book somewhere. I always laughed at him.”
Clyde was about to attempt an answer, although already
beyond his depth in regard to this. “Social importance.” Just
what did he mean by that—some deep, scientific
information that he had acquired at college. He was saved
a non-committal or totally uninformed answer by Sondra
who, without thought or knowledge of the difficulty which
was then and there before him, exclaimed: “Oh, no
arguments, Freddie. That’s not interesting. Besides I want
him to meet my brother and Bertine. You remember Miss
Cranston. She was with me at your uncle’s last spring.”
Clyde turned, while Fred made the best of the rebuff by
merely looking at Sondra, whom he admired so very much.
“Yes, of course,” Clyde began, for he had been studying
these two along with others. To him, apart from Sondra,
Bertine seemed exceedingly attractive, though quite beyond
his understanding also. Being involved, insincere and sly,
she merely evoked in him a troubled sense of
ineffectiveness, and hence uncertainty, in so far as her
particular world was concerned—no more.
“Oh, how do you do? It’s nice to see you again,” she
drawled, the while her greenish-gray eyes went over him in
a smiling and yet indifferent and quizzical way. She thought
him attractive, but not nearly as shrewd and hard as she
would have preferred him to be. “You’ve been terribly busy
with your work, I suppose. But now that you’ve come out
once, I suppose we’ll see more of you here and there.”
“Well, I hope so,” he replied, showing his even teeth.
Her eyes seemed to be saying that she did not believe what
she was saying and that he did not either, but that it was
necessary, possibly amusing, to say something of the sort.
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And a related, though somewhat modified, version of this
same type of treatment was accorded him by Stuart,
Sondra’s brother.
“Oh, how do you do. Glad to know you. My sister has just
been telling me about you. Going to stay in Lycurgus long?
Hope you do. We’ll run into one another once in a while
then, I suppose.”
Clyde was by no means so sure, but he admired the easy,
shallow way in which Stuart laughed and showed his even
white teeth—a quick, genial, indifferent laugh. Also the way
in which he turned and laid hold of Wynette Phant’s white
arm as she passed. “Wait a minute, Wyn. I want to ask you
something.” He was gone—into another room—bending
close to her and talking fast. And Clyde had noticed that his
clothes were perfectly cut.
What a gay world, he thought. What a brisk world. And just
then Jill Trumbull began calling, “Come on, people. It’s not
my fault. The cook’s mad about something and you’re all
late anyhow. We’ll get it over with and then dance, eh?”
“You can sit between me and Miss Trumbull when she gets
the rest of us seated,” assured Sondra. “Won’t that be nice?
And now you may take me in.”
She slipped a white arm under Clyde’s and he felt as
though he were slowly but surely being transported to
paradise.
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Chapter 26
THE dinner itself was chatter about a jumble of places,
personalities, plans, most of which had nothing to do with
anything that Clyde had personally contacted here.