AT THE BALL

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 6, 11 October 1919, Page 18

AT THE BALL

[By 149.]

••/|\ HEY must be absolutely naiee, £ don't you know," said the President of the Aristo Club to the Select Committee of Superior Persons who were engaged making a list of People worthy to be invited to a Naval Ball. The secretary, a worried little man, weighed down with the responsibility of living up to his job among the aristocracy, suggested "Mr. and Mrs. Twemfold."

"The Twemfolds?" exclaimed the President, the hot-blood of his ancestors surging into the back of his neck. "Twemfold? Good Gad man —his f awther keeps a shawp—a bally shawp, where people actually buy things—hang it all, out out the Twemfolds!" ;

"What about Miggins, sir?" respectfully asked the Secretary.

"Aw, Miggins? Yaas, Miggins. VVaife and daughtaw. Fame gel the daughtaw. But what's Miggins?"

"Oh, he's in the Railway Depart-

ment."

"Good heavens! You cawn'tf have greasy people theaw. What would the officiahs say—what?"

"They'd say that Miss Miggins was a dash fine girl," obtruded a mn 11, bending fondly over a glass of Number Eleven and soda.

"But the brute works. No, we pawsitively cawn't, doncherknow." Cut him out!"

And down the list the harried Secretaiy went, cutting out "trade " nnd all that sort of awfulness.

"Here's Bings," he muttered. "Can he be invited? He made £3,000 swapping a £500 property ten times."

"Does he have creases down his trousers?" sternly asked the President.

•'He does."

"Then let him be admitted. Three thousand pounds, you say? Waife quaite naice, too, and all that?"

"Perfectly nice, sir. Her father owned a racehorse and has a £750 monument erected on his grave."

"We must keep this affair select," said the President, "and eliminate all possible boundahs."

The manager of the great softgoods house of Selvedge, Scroggins, and Co. rubbed his white hands together as he slid deftly into the millinery department, his black coat tails swaying gently in the scented atmosphere. To the lady in charge he said, "Miss Macmanchester, I trust we shall see you at Church to-night ? We are welcoming a reverend brother from Kalamazoo. By the way, that ball dress—it's marked at £75—and must have cost the firm at least ten. Don't you think it's a leetle too low? There's a Naval Ball next week. Suppose Df© say £150?" J SHALL see you

TURNUP'S TRIUMPH.

AND THE WINDELL - WOLLOPS;

at Church to-night then?" and he glided away to the next department, hoping to suppress high prices among the furs and feathers.

Mr. Wendell-Wollop reached his home from the City to find his wife practising court bows in the bathroom. She had Wollop's shaving glass piled up on a bar of soap, so that she might catch a glimpse of

her twinkling feet. Wollop entered the drawing-room to find an invitation on the mantelpiece addressed to "Mr. and Mis. Wendell-Wollop." It was for a Naval Ball.

"I'll have to get my clean collars home from the Chinaman," he muttered darkly, throwing himself into a chair upholstered in Louis Quinze style (by Messrs. Mayrake and Hidjus, the eminent furniture engineers), and staring at a German print of a Welsh lake on the wall.

"What's gone wrong with the room?" he muttered to himself, and calling out towards the -bathroom: "Millie! isn't something shifted from the drawing room?" waited tremblingly for a reply.

"Yes, dearest heart," came the reply, a little short-winded, with courtbowing, but still ladylike—"the piano, darling! I sent it to the auction room. There's a perfect duck of a dress at Selvedge and Scrogginses—only £150. The piano is a real

Schweinenliundsen, and it ought to fetch a hundred. There's your motor bike and the lawnmower, , and the kit of tools your uncle gave you, and the roll of linoleum in the servant's bedroom. We could sell THEM. You see, pet, we positively must NOT look dowdy at these affairs. It isn't as if I was old. I'm only for -that is twenty-eight— and these Navy men are SUCH lovely dawncahs."

Wendell-Wollop, who was a strong man when imposing discipline on an office boy or a typiste, relapsed into a chair and groaned. Then he went to the wash-house, obtained a bottle of benzine, and stole to the wardrobe, where he endeavoured to remove the shine from the seams of his twenty years' old dress clothes. "I'll have to buy a new white tio,"

he hissed—"and they're gone up to one and ninepence. The cost of living is something dreadful!"

Mrs. Wendell-Wollop pranced across She glassy surface of the ballroom, for she had observed Miss Fandaleur, the society reportress of "The Weekly Warmingpan." Although she didn't KNOW Miss Fandaleur, she appeared perfectly acquainted with her name now.

"Delayted to see you, Miss Fandaleur," she said; "awf'ly naice dawnce, don't you think ? How perfectly sweet the Naval officahs look —give such a touch of Colaw to the room, and all that?" turning deftly to permit Miss Fandaleur to perceive that the back of her £150 garment was cut in the prevailing Q shape, with festoons of thin-gummy alternating, with pinkorettos cut on the bias.

Miss Fandaleur's tired eyes were busy following a one pound twelve and sixpenny white muslin frock

which was being whirled in the mazy valse by a tall, devilishly handsome naval officer.

"Good-bay! Miss Fandaleur," cooed Mrs. Wendell-Wollop, observing her husband with the end of his one and ninepenny tie out of curl, miserably punishing the claret cup in an alcove devoted to music, sandwiches and damp goods.

"Good-bye!" "echoed the reportress, asking a mental query of herself, "Now who on earth is THAT? What a perfectly awful dress!"

The President of the Club,

im-

maculately got up, had driven a Navy man into a. corner. "Awf'ly good people heaw to.naight, sir!" he purred.

"Yes, very nice—seem a bit stiff, though—not much pep about 'em. Now there was a butcher's daughter i n Sydney—tip-top—rippin'—made a chap feel glad."

"Aw, 'but you see, these are NAICE people. We've got the Car-ter-Weals, the Perry-Winkels, the Fatson-Schnappers, the WendellWollops—and quaite the best people in the citay."

"May I ask, sir, your own name?"

"Oh, yes! I'm Mr. SweedsonTurmip, President of the Aristo Club—l beg your pardon—the Claub."

"By Jove, that's quaint 1 Why, there's a Turnup aboard the ship— old A.8., top-hole chap—one of the best sailors we've got."

"But you don't KNOW him, of course "

"Know him? Of course, I know him! He's one of my chaps—comes from the same village—Trepen on tho Pol, in the West Country. H

old father's about 97 or something —been a farm labourer on our place, boy and man, all his life. Decent old cock, too! We had larks no end together when I was a kid."

•The President saw an acquaintance and moved away. Anyone who could read minds would have found inscribed on Sweedson-Turmip's these words, " I haven't written home to the old dad in 20 years—wonder if I ought to go aboard the ship and see Brother Bill?"

Mis. Wendell-Wollop sat on the edge of her bed, her £150 garment singularly attenuated in appearance, adorning the back of a chair. Wollop's revived coat was crumpled up on a tin trunk, and his one and ninepenny tie depended limply from the right-hand rail of the mirror.

"The cats!" hissed Mrs. Wendell-

Wollop

"Where?" demanded Wollop, reaching for a boot.

"At the ball," sobbed the lady; "I didn't get a dance! A girl with a frock that cost only 7s. llfd. a yard danced everything, including extras, and that bold Mrs. Pauvre, who wore that horrid magenta dress she had when the American Fleet was here, was the most-popular creature in the room." "Oh hell!" wailed Wendell-Wol-lop, diving for his pyjama jacket under the pillow, "let's go to bed—l'm fed up!"