I Forbid the Banns! — page 306: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

296 | “7 FORBID THE BANNS!” bands. What was Mrs. Charlton’s day, they were anxious to know—where was she living? When the young women—some of them—were so gracious, it did not seem absurd that the young men—and the old ones—should be doubly so. ‘They were; and Bertha told them what her day was and where she lived, and they expressed themselves delighted at the prospect of visiting Mrs, Charlton. Thus it came about that, on Mrs. Charlton’s “ day,” she received as many visitors in the course of a few hours as she had done during the whole of her life in Australia. The next day there was a snowstorm, with invitation cards for flakes, on her table. She had become a Personage in London society. Of all forms of slavery in the world that of a Personage in London society is the least disagreeable. The bitter draught was, she admitted, most successfully disguised. Every day brought her something new and interesting. She did not consider the possibility that she herself was regarded as the newest and, consequently, the most interest- ing of the features of the season. She felt that the people who showered invitations upon her did so out of kindness to her. She did not consider if it might not be that the people were anxious only to increase the success of their own entertainments by securing her for them. Julian Charlton had lived in London society for some years. He had been a Personage in the best scientific ‘set.’ He had made some discoveries of an interesting but unnegotiable nature. He had been assured bya practi- cal worker that if he turned all his attention in the direc- tion of threading needles by electricity, a fortune would be the inevitable result. Another hinted at the manufacture of aérated tea and coffee, another at the utilization of seaweed for the making of apple jelly, and yet another at the invention of an odorless disinfectant for the pocket, CORNIELIOOKS