Presently they will all come trooping in to breakfast,
in coloured blazers and fancy blouses, laughing and
grabbing at the food with mimic rudeness and bursts of
hilarity. And to think that I might have been breakfasting
at my club with the morning paper propped against the
coffee-pot, in a silent room in the quiet of the city.
I repeat that it is my own fault that I am here.
For many years it had been a principle of my life to
visit nobody. I had long since learned that visiting only
brings misery. If I got a card or telegram that said,
"Won't you run up to the Adirondacks and spend the week-end
with us?" I sent back word: "No, not unless the Adirondacks
can run faster than I can," or words to that effect. If
the owner of a country house wrote to me: "Our man will
meet you with a trap any afternoon that you care to name,"
I answered, in spirit at least: "No, he won't, not unless
he has a bear-trap or one of those traps in which they
catch wild antelope." If any fashionable lady friend
wrote to me in the peculiar jargon that they use: "Can
you give us from July the twelfth at half-after-three
till the fourteenth at four?" I replied: "Madam, take
the whole month, take a year, but leave me in peace.
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