| Of course an afternoon tea
is not to be taken seriously,
and I hold that any kind of
conversation goes, as long
as it is properly vacuous
and irrelevant.
One meets many kinds of
afternoon teas-the bored,
the bashful, the intense,
and once in a while the
interesting, but for pure
delight there is nothing
quite equals the gusher.
She is generally very pretty.
Nature insists upon compensations.
When you meet a real gusher-one
born to gush-you can just
throw all bounds of probability
aside and say the first
thing that comes into your
head, sure that it will
meet with an appreciative
burst of enthusiasm, for
your true gusher is nothing
if she is not enthusiastic.
There are those who listen
to everything you say and
punctuate it with "Yes-s-s,
yes-s-s, yes-s-s,"
until the sibilance gets
on your nerves; but the
attention of the Simon-pure
gusher is purely subconscious.
She could not repeat a thing
of what you have told her
a half minute after hearing
it. Her real attention is
on something else all the
while-perhaps on the gowns
of her neighbors, perhaps
on the reflection of her
pretty face-but never on
the conversation. And why
should it be? Is a tea a
place for the exercise of
concentration? Perish the
thought.
You are presented to her
as "Mr. Mmmm,"
and she is "delighted,"
and smiles so ravishingly
that you wish you were twenty
years younger. You do not
yet know that she is a gusher.
But her first remark labels
her. Just to test her, for
there is something in the
animation of her face and
the farawayness of the eye
that makes you suspect her
sincerity, you say:
"I happen to have
six children-"
"Oh, how perfectly
dee-ar! How old are they?"
She scans the gown of a
woman who has just entered
the room and, being quite
sure that she is engaged
in a mental valuation of
it, you say:
"They're all of them
six."
"Oh, how lovely!"
Her unseeing eyes look you
in the face. "Just
the right age to be companions."
"Yes, all but one."
The eye has wandered to
another gown, but the sympathetic
voice says:
"Oh, what a pi-i-ty!"
"Yes, isn't it? But
he's quite healthy."
It's a game now-fair game-and
you're glad you came to
the tea!
"Healthy, you say?
How nice. It's perfectly
lovely to be healthy. Do
you live in the country?"
"Not exactly the country.
We live in Madison Square,
under the trees."
"Oh, how perfectly
idyllic!"
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