Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/82

 "Yes, he rose to the food. But not to the drinks. I took him, after all, to my club. I innocently suggested cocktails; but, no. He declined—in a deft but straightforward way. Country principles. Smalltown morals. He made me feel like a—well, like a corrupter of youth."

"You didn't mind, though,—of course you didn't. You liked it. Wasn't it noble! Wasn't it charming! So glad that w had nothing but Apollinaris and birch beer! Still, it would have been a pleasure to hear him refuse."

The receiving-teller gave her her vouchers. She put them in her handbag and somehow got round a perambulator, and the two went out on the street.

"And how did your 'show' go?" she continued. "That's about as much as we can call the drama in these days."

"That, possibly, didn't go quite so well. I took him to a 'comedy,'—as they nowadays call their mixture of farce and funniment. 'Comedy'!—I wish Meredith could have seen it! Well, he laughed a little, here and there,—obligingly, I might say. But there was no 'chew' in the thing for him,—nothing to fill his intellectual maw. He's a serious youngster, after all,—exuberant as he seems. I felt him appraising me as a gay old irresponsible"

"'Old'—you are not to use that word. Come, don't say that he—that he venerated you!"

"Oh, not at all. During the six hours we were together—train, club, theatre, and train again—he never once called me 'sir'; he never once employed our