Tom Poppins immediately introduced Nelly to a facetious cigar
salesman, who introduced her to three of the beaux in evening
clothes, while Tom led out Mrs. Arty. Mr. Wrenn, sitting in a
row of persons who were not at all interested in his sorrows,
glowered out across the hall, and wished, oh! so bitterly, to
flee home. Nelly came up, glowing, laughing, with
black-mustached and pearl-waistcoated men, and introduced him to
them, but he glanced at them disapprovingly; and always she was
carried off to dance again.
She found and hopefully introduced to Mr. Wrenn a wallflower who
came from Yonkers and had never heard of Tom Poppins or
aeroplanes or Oxford or any other topic upon which Mr. Wrenn
uneasily tried to discourse as he watched Nelly waltz and smile
up at her partners. Presently the two sat silent. The wallflower
excused herself and went back to her mama from Yonkers.
Mr. Wrenn sat sulking, hating his friends for having brought
him, hating the sweetness of Nelly Croubel, and saying to
himself, "Oh--_sure_--she dances with all those other men--me,
I'm only the poor fool that talks to her when she's tired and
tries to cheer her up.
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