On his arrival he was offered a drink, a cigar, introduced to Mrs.McKenty--who, lacking an organized social life of any kind, was always pleased to meet these celebrities of the upper world, if only for a moment--and shown eventually into the library.
Mrs.McKenty, as he might have observed if he had had the eye for it, was plump and fifty, a sort of superannuated Aileen, but still showing traces of a former hardy beauty, and concealing pretty well the evidences that she had once been a prostitute.

It so happened that on this particular evening McKenty was in a most genial frame of mind.
There were no immediate political troubles bothering him just now.

It was early in May.

Outside the trees were budding, the sparrows and robins were voicing their several moods.

A delicious haze was in the air, and some early mosquitoes were reconnoitering the screens which protected the windows and doors.