Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/749

1868.] spectator of her gambols. She added to this gesticulation a way of plunging forward from her girdle upward, when she waxed very animated, that threatened to precipitate her into the lap of her fellow-colloquist, after which she would lay her hand upon her heaving bust and swallow audibly, while awaiting a reply to her latest deliverance. To sum up description in one word—Mrs. Baxter's specialty was Manner.

Her friends were correct in one laudation. She was amiable and kind-hearted in her way, as her husband was in his. If she trafficked upon this excellence, made the most of it, very much after the style in which she showed off her teeth and hands, it was rather because display was her controlling foible, than through any design upon the answering gratitude of her beneficiaries. She was dressed in black silk, with a jaunty velvet basquine, a scarlet scarf, fastened upon the right shoulder by an antique cameo, and knotted under the left, the fringed ends falling low down upon her skirt.

She was just established in her comfortable causeuse, when the door-bell heralded a visitor.

"My dear Mr. Wyllys!" she exclaimed, fluttering forward to meet him. "You are doubly welcome when you come alone. One sees you so seldom except when surrounded by a crowd, that it is a genuine pleasure to have a moment's quiet conversation with you."

"It is like yourself, Mrs. Baxter, to excuse my unfashionably early call with such gracious tact," responded the gentleman, bowing low over her hand.

He shook hands with the doctor with less empressement, but most respectfully, and sank upon the divan nearest the hostess.

"I have another engagement this evening, but I could not deny myself the pleasure of paying my devoirs to you in passing. I will not ask if you have recovered from the fatigue of Thursday night"—with an expressive look at her blooming face. "I believe, however, it is never a weariness to you to be agreeable, as it is to us duller and less benevolent mortals. I am horribly cross, always, on the morning succeeding a party."

"And who says I am not, also?" beamed the lady. "If the doctor—dear, patient martyr!—were put into the witness-box, he might tell sad tales. Doctor, my love! Mr. Wyllys wants to know what was the status of my spiritual thermometer on the morning after our little gathering last week."

"Eh! What did you say, my dear?"

He lowered his folio. His eyebrows were perked discontentedly, and his forefinger was in the doomed bow she had tied not fifteen minutes before.

"Mr. Wyllys has heard that I am like champagne, 'stale, flat, and unprofitable,' with a dash of vinegar, when the effervescence is off!" vivified by the mirthful misrepresentation into radiance that revealed every molar, and forced her eyelids into utter retirement.

"Ah!" The doctor smiled absently, and re-bent his brows upon the page, protruding his lips in a vicious pout as he read.

"He disdains to notice the slander," resumed Mrs. Baxter, unabashed at her failure to elicit a conjugal compliment. "Seriously, Mr. Wyllys, I am thankful for the guidance of reason and will that counterbalance my mercurial temperament. My spirit resembles nothing else so much as a mettled steed, whose curvetings are restrained by an inexorable rein. But for my sober judgment, impulse would have led me into an erratic course, I fear."

Relaxing the tension of the fingers and wrist that had pulled hard at an