Bertie sat down suddenly and shrieked. Jeems rolled over and over,
clutching small feathers from the mattress in the agony of his delight,
while the clothed youths contented themselves with amused but gurgling
chuckles.
"Bennie, my boy," gasped Jeems, at last, "you'll be the death of me! O
Lord! O Lord! You unfortunate infant! You shall come here and have a
drum to pound; yes, you shall." He tottered weakly to his feet. "Come,
Bertie, let us go get dressed."
The two disappeared into the bedroom, leaving de Laney uncomfortably
alone with the occupants of the window ledge.
The young fellow walked awkwardly across the room and sat down on a
partly empty chair, not because he preferred sitting to standing, but
in order to give himself time to recover from his embarrassment.
The sort of chaffing to which he had just been subjected was direct and
brutal; it touched all his tender spots--the very spots wherein he
realized the intensest soreness of his deficiencies, and about which,
therefore, he was the most sensitive--yet, somehow, he liked it. This
was because the Leslie boys meant to him everything free and young that
he had missed in the precise atmosphere of his own home, and so he
admired them and stood in delightful inferiority to them in spite of
his wealth and position. He would have given anything he owned to have
felt himself one of their sort; but, failing that, the next best thing
was to possess their intimacy. Of this intimacy chaffing was a gauge.
Bennington Clarence de Laney always glowed at heart when they rubbed
his fur the wrong way, for it showed that they felt they knew him well
enough to do so. And in this there was something just a little
pathetic.
Bennington held to the society standpoint with men, so he thought he
must keep up a conversation. He did so. It was laboured. Bennington
thought of things to say about Art, the Theatre, and Books. Hench and
Beck looked at each other from time to time.
Finally the door opened, and, to the relief of all, two sweatered and
white-ducked individuals appeared.
"And now, Jeems, we'll smoke the pipe of peace," suggested Bert, diving
for the mantel and the pipe rack.
"Correct, my boy," responded Jeems, doing likewise. They lit up, and
turned with simultaneous interest to their latest caller.
"And how is the proud plutocrat?" inquired Bert; "and how did he
contrive to get leave to visit us rude and vulgar persons?"
The Leslies had called at the de Laneys', and, as Bert said, had dined
there once. They recognised their status, and rejoiced therein.
"He is calling on the minister," explained Jeems for him. "Bennington,
my son, you'll get caught at that some day, as sure as shooting. If
your mamma ever found out that, instead of talking society-religion to
old Garnett, you were revelling in this awful dissipation, you'd have
to go abroad again."