There was no romantic shilly-shallying fol-de-rol about him.

Women learned what to expect from him in short order.

En garde, Madame!--ou Mademoiselle--tant pis! He laughed to himself and rolled over, digging his head into the pillows and stretching his fat hands to ease their congestion.

And most of all he amused himself with figuring out the exact degree of his wife's astonishment and chagrin when, without consulting her, he achieved the triumph of Quarrier's elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly Plank upon the stage.

He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether, too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated, crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only a rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a very much mussed-up buck-rabbit.
"Haw! haw!" roared Mortimer, rolling about in his bed and kicking the slippers from his fat feet.