Mr. Severance--the courtesy title at least is due him--seems to be a
man with quite a number of costly possessions. At least here he is with
another house, a dinner-table, servants, guests, another Mrs. Severance
or somebody who seems to fill her place very adequately at the opposite
end of the table, all as if Rose and the Riverside Drive apartment and
reading Dickens aloud were only parts of a doll-house kept in one locked
drawer of his desk.
The dinner is flawless, the guests importantly jeweled or stomached,
depending on their sex, the other Mrs. Severance an admirable
hostess--and yet in spite of it all, Mr. Severance does not seem to be
enjoying himself as he should. But this may be due to a sort of minstrel
give-and-take of dialogue that keeps going on between what he says for
publication and what he thinks.
“Well, Frazee, I'll be ready to go into that loan matter with you
inside a month,” says his voice, and his mind “Frazee, you slippery old
burglar, it won't be a month before you'll be spreading the news that
my disappearance means suicide and that the Commercial is rotten, lock,
stock and barrel.”
“Yes, dear,” in answer to a relayed query from the other Mrs. Severance.
“The children took the small car to go to the dance.” “And, Mary, if
they'd ever been our children instead of your keeping them always
yours, there wouldn't be that little surprise in store for you that I've
arranged.”
“Cigar, Winthrop?” “Better take two, my friend--they won't be as good
after Mary has charge of that end of the house.”
So it goes--until Mr. Severance has dined very well indeed. And yet
Winthrop, chatting with Frazee, just before they go out of the door,
finds it necessary to whisper to him for some reason--half a dozen words
under cover of a discussion of what the Shipping Board's new move will
mean to the mercantile marine. “I told you so, George. See his hands?
The old boy's failing.”