A Pink Wedding (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3 CHAPTER III. WITH HELMET AND PLUME. HE dinner at Hurstenholme that evening was a merry one. Mr. Moltbury kept the fun going with barely a moment's cessation. He could always adapt himself to the idiosyncrasies of his guests. Were they archaeological?and the Archseological Society had met more than once at Hurstenholme, and been sumptuously regaled, mentally as well as gastronomically?he was a very Dryasdust. Were they military, his conversation was 'horribly stuffed with epithets of war.' Were they political, he was a walking Hansard. In short, he could be all things to all men. Addison used to say there was no such thing as real conversation but between two people. Mr. Moltbury held a contrary opinion. He liked a gallery. In the present instance, to suit the volatile disposition of his principal guest, he, so to speak, threw all the ballast of his nature overboard and allowed himself to toss about with a cork-like buoyancy whithersoever the light current of his fancy took him. He joked and laughed as if motley were his only wear, and he invoked that ' goddess, fair and free, in heaven yclep'd Euphrosyne'? ' Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles.' In brief and prose, Mr. Moltbury was this evening, as Lady Mabel herself would have said, ' in rare fettle." 'And so you are a great advocate for travel, Mr. Moltbury ?' said Lady Mabel, after having listened to a humorous account from Mr. Moltbury of what may be termed his counter-apotheosis by the simple and superstitious folk of Mianoshta. 'Yes, certainly, my dear Lady Mabel. Nothing like travel; and even if we cannot travel ourselves, we may catch through the medium of books some of the reflected experiences and pleasures of those who ...