“Awfully sorry my coming ran you away—didn’t know I was such an ogre,” he apologized as Mrs. Crosby hurriedly gathered the more intimate garments she had brought forth for Mimi’s inspection.
“You didn’t run me—I should have been gone long since—”
“The Holy Behemoth’s been talking you deaf, dumb and blind,” he whispered with a nod in the general direction of Mrs. Crosby, who was humming a music hall air she had heard the night before. Or, rather she hummed with a peculiar dissonance the tune she thought she had heard.
“Not so bad—she has her good points. I wish I could have saved her the job of buying a lot of the things she’s been showing me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself—neither wind nor wave nor howling storm can stop her from dumping Horace’s money all over the place. There’s a glitter that springs to the eyes of shopkeepers all over Europe whenever Eulalia appears on the scene—they hustle to drag out all the junk they think they’ve been stuck with and unload it on her, telling her it’s genuine Rodin or Millet or whatever springs to their minds at the moment. Even Horace, who has twisted the tail of Wall Street dozens of times, is powerless before Eulalia—she’s irresistible when she sets out to do a thing—Gosh, here she comes!”
Some undefinable bond had sprung into being between them. By the time Mrs. Crosby had puffed her way around the room once or twice bearing armfuls of clothing into the bedroom beyond, they felt they had known each other much longer than the few minutes they had stood there.