When the taxi stopped I got out and paid. Brett came out putting on her hat. She gave me her hand as she stepped down. Her hand was shaky. "I say, do I look too much of a mess?" She pulled her man's felt hat down and started in for the bar. Inside, against the bar and at tables, were most of the crowd who had been at the dance.
"Hello, you chaps," Brett said. "I'm going to have a drink."
"Oh, Brett! Brett!" the little Greek portrait-painter, who called himself a duke, and whom everybody called Zizi, pushed up to her. "I got something fine to tell you."
"Hello, Zizi," Brett said.
"I want you to meet a friend," Zizi said. A fat man came up.
"Count Mippipopolous, meet my friend Lady Ashley."
"How do you do?" said Brett.
"Well, does your Ladyship have a good time here in Paris?" asked Count Mippipopolous, who wore an elk's tooth on his watch-chain.
"Rather," said Brett.
"Paris is a fine town all right," said the count. "But I guess you have pretty big doings yourself over in London."
"Oh, yes," said Brett. "Enormous."
Braddocks called to me from a table. "Barnes," he said, "have a drink. That girl of yours got in a frightful row."
"What about?"
"Something the patronne's daughter said. A corking row. She was rather splendid, you know. Showed her yellow card and demanded the patronne's daughter's too. I say it was a row."
"What finally happened?"
"Oh, some one took her home. Not a bad-looking girl. Wonderful command of the idiom. Do stay and have a drink."
"No," I said. "I must shove off. Seen Cohn?"
"He went home with Frances," Mrs. Braddock put in.
"Poor chap, he looks awfully down," Braddocks said.
