"Oh,it's--oh,never mind now.It isn't a subject on which one can be funny.""Then what's he want to talk about it for?"
She waited for another quarter of an hour.Then,evidently bored,and much to my relief,suggested herself that she might as well go to bed.She ran to me the next morning in the garden with an air of triumph.
"He said something so funny last night,"she told me.
"Oh,what was it?"I inquired.It seemed to me I must have missed it.
"Well,I can't exactly 'member it,"she explained,"not just at the moment.But it was so funny.I dreamed it,you know."For folks not Lions,but closely related to Lions,introductions must be trying ordeals.You tell them that for years you have been yearning to meet them.You assure them,in a voice trembling with emotion,that this is indeed a privilege.You go on to add that when a boy -At this point they have to interrupt you to explain that they are not the Mr.So-and-So,but only his cousin or his grandfather;and all you can think of to say is:"Oh,I'm so sorry."I had a nephew who was once the ******* long-distance bicycle champion.I have him still,but he is stouter and has come down to a motor car.In sporting circles I was always introduced as "Shorland's Uncle."Close-cropped young men would gaze at me with rapture;and then inquire:"And do you do anything yourself,Mr.Jerome?"
But my case was not so bad as that of a friend of mine,a doctor.He married a leading actress,and was known ever afterwards as "Miss B-'s husband."
At public dinners,where one takes one's seat for the evening next to someone that one possibly has never met before,and is never likely to meet again,conversation is difficult and dangerous.I remember talking to a lady at a Vagabond Club dinner.She asked me during the entree--with a light laugh,as I afterwards recalled--what I thought,candidly,of the last book of a certain celebrated authoress.I told her,and a coldness sprang up between us.She happened to be the certain celebrated authoress;she had changed her place at the last moment so as to avoid sitting next to another lady novelist,whom she hated.
One has to shift oneself,sometimes,on these occasions.A newspaper man came up to me last Ninth of November at the Mansion House.
"Would you mind changing seats with me?"he asked."It's a bit awkward.They've put me next to my first wife."I had a troubled evening myself once long ago.I accompanied a young widow lady to a musical At Home,given by a lady who had more acquaintances than she knew.We met the butler at the top of the stairs.My friend spoke first:
"Say Mrs.Dash and--"
The butler did not wait for more--he was a youngish man--but shouted out:
"Mr.and Mrs.Dash."
"My dear!how very quiet you have kept!"cried our hostess delighted.
"Do let me congratulate you."
The crush was too great and our hostess too distracted at the moment for any explanations.We were swept away,and both of us spent the remainder of the evening feebly protesting our singleness.