Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/127

THE SPECIAL TYPE "To make up?"

"I never saw him alone," said Mrs. Dundene.

I am still keeping the thing to send to her, punctually, on the day he's married; but I had of course, on my understanding with her, a tremendous bout with Mrs. Cavenham, who protested with indignation against my "base treachery" and made to Brivet an appeal for redress which, enlightened, face to face with the magnificent humility of his other friend's selection, he couldn't, for shame, entertain. All he was able to do was to suggest to me that I might for one or other of the ladies, at my choice, do him again; but I had no difficulty in replying that my best was my best and that what was done was done. He assented with the awkwardness of a man in dispute between women, and Mrs. Cavenham remained furious. "Can't 'they'—of all possible things, think!—take something else?"

"Oh, they want him!"

"Him?" It was monstrous.

"To live with," I explained—"to make up."

"To make up for what?"

"Why, you know, they never saw him alone."