when I got to be pally with her, I'd conclude she didn't furnish."

"Oh, yes," said Miss Wyman. "She just meant that when you knew her,
you'd be disappointed. You see, she picks up all the race-track
slang--one can't help it, you know. And last year she took her coach
over to England, and so she's got all the English slang. That makes
it hard, even for us."

And then Betty sailed in to entertain him with little sketches of
other members of the party. A phenomenon that had struck Montague
immediately was the extraordinary freedom with which everybody in
New York discussed everybody else. As a matter of fact, one seldom
discussed anything else; and it made not the least difference,
though the person were one of your set,--though he ate your bread
and salt, and you ate his,--still you would amuse yourself by
pouring forth the most painful and humiliating and terrifying things
about him.

There was poor Clarrie Mason: Clarrie, sitting in at bridge, with an
expression of feverish eagerness upon his pale face. Clarrie always
lost, and it positively broke his heart, though he had ten millions
laid by on ice. Clarrie went about all day, bemoaning his brother,
who had been kidnapped. Had Montague not heard about it? Well, the
newspapers called it a marriage, but it was really a kidnapping.
Poor Larry Mason was good-natured and weak in the knees, and he had
been carried off by a terrible creature, three times as big as
himself, and with a temper like--oh, there were no words for it! She
had been an actress; and now she had carried Larry away in her
talons, and was building a big castle to keep him in--for he had ten
millions too, alas!