“I don’t want to talk about literature,” exclaimed the other.  In truth, she wanted nothing save to feel of his armour and find out if there were any weak spots through which he could be teased.  Montague was to find in time that the adorable Miss Elizabeth was a very thorny species of rose—­she was more like a gay-coloured wasp, of predatory temperament.

“Ollie says you want to go down town and work,” she went on.  “I think you’re awfully foolish.  Isn’t it much nicer to spend your time in an imitation castle like this?”

“Perhaps,” said ho, “but I haven’t any castle.”

“You might get one,” answered Betty.  “Stay around awhile and let us marry you to a nice girl.  They will all throw themselves at your feet, you know, for you have such a delicious melting voice, and you look romantic and exciting.” (Montague made a note to inquire whether it was customary in New York to talk about you so frankly to your face.)

Miss Betty was surveying him quizzically meantime.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “On second thoughts, maybe you’ll frighten the girls.  Then it’ll be the married women who’ll fall in love with you.  You’ll have to watch out.”

“I’ve already been told that by my tailor,” said Montague, with a laugh.

“That would be a still quicker way of making your fortune,” said she.  “But I don’t think you’d fit in the role of a tame cat.”

“A what?” he exclaimed; and Miss Betty laughed.

“Don’t you know what that is?  Dear me—­how charmingly naive!  But perhaps you’d better get Ollie to explain for you.”

That brought the conversation to the subject of slang; and Montague, in a sudden burst of confidence, asked for an interpretation of Miss Price’s cryptic utterance.  “She said”—­he repeated slowly—­“that when I got to be pally with her, I’d conclude she didn’t furnish.”

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Wyman.  “She just meant that when you knew her, you’d be disappointed.  You see, she picks up all the race-track slang—­one can’t help it, you know.  And last year she took her coach over to England, and so she’s got all the English slang.  That makes it hard, even for us.”

And then Betty sailed in to entertain him with little sketches of other members of the party.  A phenomenon that had struck Montague immediately was the extraordinary freedom with which everybody in New York discussed everybody else.  As a matter of fact, one seldom discussed anything else; and it made not the least difference, though the person were one of your set,—­though he ate your bread and salt, and you ate his,—­still you would amuse yourself by pouring forth the most painful and humiliating and terrifying things about him.