Page:Bobbie, General Manager (1913).djvu/327

Rh of the rose brocade on the walls. I had not confided to Will my intention of a consultation with Mrs. Sewall, and just for a moment as I sat there on the edge of a formal little gilt-trimmed chair, I wondered if my intuitions were leading me into a dreadful social blunder.

"She will see you; suite thirty-three. The boy will show you up," suddenly broke in on my reflections, and in another moment I was silently shooting up the elevator shaft, gazing at a row of brass buttons on the bell-boy's coat and estimating their number, to keep myself calm.

The room into which I was conducted was empty when I entered it—a typical hotel-suite drawing-room, furnished with elaborate and very puffy looking stuffed furniture. I chose the only straight chair in the room, and sat down and waited again. I had met Mrs. Sewall only once in my life, quite formally at a party of some sort at Edith's. We may have exchanged a half dozen words, not more. I had never been invited to her grand house, and most of my knowledge of the lady had come through hearsay, and the social columns in the papers. It was necessary to keep my mind pretty closely fastened on the cigarette spectacle, or else I might have lost courage, and quietly withdrawn before Mrs. Sewall appeared. She kept me waiting in torture for at least fifteen minutes (I can tell you the subject of every one of the engravings on the wall, I am sure) but the queer thing is, that when she finally joined me and I rose to speak, I forgot to be afraid. Will says that such an experience is very common with him in making an after-dinner speech.