Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/41

 thud of a small white hand punching a velvet cushion.

He caught Eric's coat at the door. "Will you save my life, Pep? Call up Rhoda at Alcie Pender's and tell her I can't possibly get away this afternoon." He had an impulse partly jealous, partly sporting, partly malicious, partly self-castigatory. "Substitute for me, if you like. It's a tea dance."

"Who's Alcie Pender?"

"A tall thin blonde, looks like macaroni—with hair au gratin. She's in the telephone book—I mean her mother is—"

"And the social register," sang out Max, "and the book of etiquette—ho hit's the rich wot 'as the pleasures—"

Grover went into the bedroom and took down his new gray flannel suit, then rummaged for a cravat and handkerchief of the right shades of blue, his private code being quite as inexorable as any devised by society at large. Eric was whistling his way down stairs to the telephone, and Max broke into outlandish harmonies of his own. Grover felt a new prestige taking form within him,—for he had quite casually given Eric a command which Eric had quite submissively gone off to obey; moreover he was breaking an appointment with Rhoda in favor of something actually, thank heaven, dangerous.

He emerged with one arm in his coat, and left Bruff in charge. He was in nervous haste, as if rapidity would enable him to escape a host of dim troubles