East Side Story by Louis Auchincloss Read Free Book Online

secret list of all the notorious bores in Manhattan society. Then, if you found yourself seated next to one, you would call the company the next day and collect the sum with which that particular bore pays off and be able to buy yourself an etching or watercolor or what you please."
    McAllister seemed much taken with the idea. "Bravo! But mightn't there be those who would hint to their hostess beforehand that they'd like to be next to some bore of high return? People do cheat, doncherno."
    "Oh, our members would have to be persons of probity, of course. They would form a highly exclusive group."
    Bruce wondered uncomfortably if he might not have found his name on Miss Atwater's list of bores. "Supposing a bore applies for a policy in your company?" he asked her. "Could he recover by sitting in his own seat?"
    "Oh, there'd be no applications," she assured him. "Membership would be only by invitation. And kept strictly confidential."
    No, her friendly smile seemed to offer him reassurance that she did not deem him a bore, and she even looked pleased when, after the meal, he had offered to escort her up the avenue to the Bensons', where she was staying. They continued their pleasant chat as they walked, until at last she said something he didn't like at all. She had reverted to their old topic of bore insurance and now volunteered the notion that their recent host, despite his apparent amusement at the concept, was disqualified to hold a policy, as he had created the very society which had engendered the epidemic of boredom.
    "But that should make him president!" Bruce protested.
    "Well, then there's an even better reason for barring him."
    "And what, pray, is that?"
    "Why, the simple fact that he's the most crashing old bore of the lot!" she cried with a spurt of laughter. Bruce was shocked. Could any really nice girl speak so callously of an old gentleman who had condescended—yes, condescended—to call her his protégée? But he found nonetheless that she remained very much on his mind when he went to bed that night, and his sleep was restless.
    He had found other things, too, in the days that followed. When his mother offered him two seats in an opera box loaned her for the night by one of her grand friends, he invited Miss Atwater, and she not only came but explained to him in the entr'acte some interesting points about
Siegfried
that helped him for the first time to appreciate Wagner. And she did it charmingly, he had to admit, never seeming to reproach his ignorance. And then he took her to an exhibit of Holbein drawings at the Metropolitan Museum, where she proved equally congenial and instructive company. She seemed to like him, or at least to put up with him easily. He wondered if she didn't attribute a greater intelligence than he possessed to his silences as he took in her lively prattle. When he did speak, she listened carefully, and her responding comments seemed in their interpretation of his thoughts to give them a defter touch.
    But there was another aspect to her responses that at once chilled him and relieved him. She did not once, by so much as a tremor in her tone or a downward glance, seem to note or acknowledge the least hint of a suit for her affections in his sudden attentions. If he was constantly on the watch about committing himself in his relationships with the opposite sex—and he was fully aware that he was—he seemed to have nothing to fear where Kitty was concerned. If this was relaxing—and it was—he was delightfully at his ease with her—it was also a bit mortifying. Who did she think she was, that the likes of Bruce Carnochan wasn't good enough for her? He was tempted to tell her about the anticipated twenty g's.
    The great hall of the Benson palazzo, into which, after his walk around the block, he now entered, might have been harmlessly if conventionally grand without the huge stucco putti attached to the pilasters with the supposed function of holding up the