Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/141

 She's got him on the hop to keep up with her, though, and for his sake I hope he's lucky enough not to know he looks rather like her poodle trotting beside her."

Macklyn was fairer. "Oh, no. He's a distinguished-looking person, that Ogle; handsome, too; and you can tell he's 'somebody.' Even if he is a bit shorter and nearly trots as you say, he can afford it, because he's too significant looking to be even a Diana's poodle. Where do you suppose they're heading for now?"

The question was drawn from him by a change of movement on the part of Mme. Momoro and the playwright, who were leaving the promenade deck and ascending an open companionway to regions above. Albert Jones proved himself equal to a shrewd guess.

"They're going up to the smoking-room," he said. "Women smoke anywhere nowadays, of course; but for some inexplicable reason you'd find that many of these elderly American ladies on board object to the sight of one of their sex doing it in the open air. Mme. Momoro wants a cigarette; but she's been in America and she's so completely a woman of the world that she understands this curious prejudice. Shall we go up there, too?"