Besides, though the short, decided man with the greyish hair
must be fifty at least, the woman who stood his own height when she rose
from the table was too slimly mature for anything but the thirties. Not a
highly original New York couple by any means--a prospering banker or
president of a Consolidated Toothpick Company with a beautiful wife,
American matron-without-children model, except for her chin which was less
dimpled than cleft with decisiveness and the wholly original lustre of her
hair, a buried lustre like the shine of "Murray's red gold" in a Border
ballad. A wife rather less society-stricken than the run of such wives
since she obviously preferred hot August in a New York apartment with her
husband's company to beach-picnics at Greenwich or Southampton without it.
Still the apartment, though compact as an army mess-kit, was perfectly
furnished and the maid who had served the cool little dinner an efficient
effacedness of the race that housekeepers with large families and little
money assert passed with the Spanish War. Money enough, and the knowledge
of how to use it without blatancy or pinching--that would have been the
second conclusion.
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