Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/67

 stealing over me. Well, everybody was lively and gay, except at first Ryder (he's the math, man); but even he limbered up finally. Mrs. Phillips herself has a great deal of action and vivacity—seemed hardly more than thirty. Well, I could be pretty gay too with a lot of money behind me; and I think that, for another year or so, I can contrive to be gay without it. But after that

"I wish you had been there instead of Ryder. If you are really going to be twenty-seven in November—as I figure it—you might yourself have served as a connecting link between youth and age. No, no; I take it back; I didn't mean it. I wouldn't have you seem older for anything, and you know it.

"There were three girls. They all live in the house itself, forming a little court: Mrs. P. seems to need young life and young attentions. So not one of them had to be taken home—there's usually that to do, you know. Not that it would have mattered much, as the distances would have been short and the night was clear starlight. But they could all stay where they were, and I walked home in quite different company."

Cope threw back his Oriental table-cover once more and drew out a few additional sheets of paper.

"One of them is an artist. She paints portraits, and possibly other things. Oh, I was going to say there is an art-gallery at the top of the house. Her husband—I mean Mrs. Phillips'—was a painter and collector himself; and after dinner we went up there, and a curious man came in, propelling a wheeled chair—a sort of death's-head at the feast