We all know
Bale's livery stable, the same being Billy's father; but no matter.
Billy wears the best cut riding-breeches in the Park, and, let me tell
you, there are many folk in society with a smaller recommendation than
that.
Now, it is not our business to go round the rooms of the French Embassy
picking holes in the earthly robes of society's elect. Suffice it to say
that every one was there. Miss Kate Whyte, of course, who had made a
place in society and held it by the indecency of her language. Lady
Mealhead said she couldn't stand Kitty Whyte at any price. We are sorry
to use such a word as indecency in connection with a young person of the
gentler sex, but facts must sometimes be recognized. And it is a bare
fact that society tolerated, nay, encouraged, Kitty Whyte, because
society never knew, and always wanted to know, what she would say next.
She sailed so near to the unsteady breeze of decorum that the
safer-going craft hung breathlessly in her wake in the hope of an upset.
Every one, in fact, was there. All those who have had greatness thrust
upon them, and the others, those who thrust themselves upon the
great--those, in a word, who reach such as are above them by doing that
which should be beneath them. Lord Mealhead, by the way, was not there.
He never is anywhere where the respectable writer and his high-born
reader are to be found.
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