“Mimi, my dear, those orchids look, compared to their wearer, like scrub cabbages!” a voice said softly as she stood waiting for Jimmie to finish talking with a friend. Without turning, she knew it was Bert Bellamy.
“That sounds nice—even if it is a bit silly,” she smiled. Bellamy smiled in return. He was used to such receptions from Mimi of his phrases, which ordinarily gained at least gratitude from others to whom he made them. Bellamy was short and rotund, his face cherubic and ruddy like that of a healthy child. Always faultlessly dressed, one somehow felt that he kept at his bachelor apartments a barber, a tailor, a manicurist and a haberdasher, all constantly busy. Bellamy, Senior, had made untold amounts through the stockyards he owned in Chicago and Kansas City, but Bellamy, Junior, shuddered when some uncouth person tactlessly brought up the subject of the origin of the Bellamy millions.
He ostensibly was a writer, but beyond certain vague and delightfully cryptic hints that someday his major opus would make the world sit up and take notice, no one could definitely tell what he did beyond assiduous application to his beloved avocation of being a bon-vivant, a Chesterfieldian and immaculate man of the world. Once he had confided to Mimi that he was “the modern Mr. Pepys” but he had mentioned that self-bestowed title no more when she had, with gentle mockery, assured him that if the possession of all the latest gossip was the most valuable asset towards that role, then he was undoubtedly the man for it.
For Bert Bellamy went everywhere, knew everybody and, to him most fascinating, he knew everything about everybody. He had with admirably masked intentions sought to suggest to Mimi that he would enjoy taking her to dine some evening when Jimmie made infrequent business trips.