Citation de MegGomar
The air is doing you good, you’ve got more color.”
Color—rubbish! she thought, but did not say so. This was the sort of
crowd she’d always wanted. It had nothing to do with ozone or the fresh sea
breezes. This was the world of the pamphlets, the world of fashion, the
higher stratum read about since childhood, the world of the halfpenny
scandal sheets, the men and women she’d joked at, with nobody knowing.
Here they were in the flesh just as she’d pictured them—flashy, affected,
futile, and ripe for the plucking.
There went the drivers of the Four-in-Hand brigade, spanking along the
front with a call and a flourish. Bill Dowler pointed out the famous figures.
Lords Sefton, Worcester, Fitzhardinge, Sir Bellingham Graham, and wasn’t
that “Teapot” Craufurd and “Poodle” Byng?
“The best whip of the bunch is Barrymore,” he told her. “I met him once
at Almack’s. Not my sort—the devil of a rip. That’s the fellow there.”
The coach-and-four passed them at a smacking pace. The driver, with a
dahlia in his buttonhole the size of a cabbage, turned his head and stared,
then muttered a remark to his companion.
So that was Cripplegate, old Taylor’s client. Did he whip his women as
he whipped his horses, forcing the pace, hating his women slow? “All right,
my friend,” she thought, “not at this moment. I’ll meet you at number 9
Bond Street one of these days. But leave your buttonhole behind. I can’t
stick cabbage. Nor am I partial to a whip with thongs.”
Color—rubbish! she thought, but did not say so. This was the sort of
crowd she’d always wanted. It had nothing to do with ozone or the fresh sea
breezes. This was the world of the pamphlets, the world of fashion, the
higher stratum read about since childhood, the world of the halfpenny
scandal sheets, the men and women she’d joked at, with nobody knowing.
Here they were in the flesh just as she’d pictured them—flashy, affected,
futile, and ripe for the plucking.
There went the drivers of the Four-in-Hand brigade, spanking along the
front with a call and a flourish. Bill Dowler pointed out the famous figures.
Lords Sefton, Worcester, Fitzhardinge, Sir Bellingham Graham, and wasn’t
that “Teapot” Craufurd and “Poodle” Byng?
“The best whip of the bunch is Barrymore,” he told her. “I met him once
at Almack’s. Not my sort—the devil of a rip. That’s the fellow there.”
The coach-and-four passed them at a smacking pace. The driver, with a
dahlia in his buttonhole the size of a cabbage, turned his head and stared,
then muttered a remark to his companion.
So that was Cripplegate, old Taylor’s client. Did he whip his women as
he whipped his horses, forcing the pace, hating his women slow? “All right,
my friend,” she thought, “not at this moment. I’ll meet you at number 9
Bond Street one of these days. But leave your buttonhole behind. I can’t
stick cabbage. Nor am I partial to a whip with thongs.”
