t of confidence, asked for an interpretation of Miss
Price's cryptic utterance. "She said"--he repeated slowly--"that 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!

And then there was Bertie Stuyvesant, beautiful and winning--the boy
who had sat opposite Montague at dinner. Bertie's father had been a
coal man, and nobody knew how many millions he had left. Bertie was
gay; last week he had invited them to a brook-trout breakfast--in
November--and that had been a lark! Somebody had told him that trout
never really tasted good unless you caught them yourself, and Bertie
had suddenly resolved to catch them for that breakfast. "They have a
big preserve up in the Adirondacks," said Betty; "and Bertie ordered
his private train, and he and Chappie de Peyster and some others
started that night; they drove I don't know how many miles the next
day, a