Pett was at home to her friends in the house on
Riverside Drive. The proceedings were on a scale that amounted to
a reception, for they were not only a sort of official
notification to New York that one of its most prominent hostesses
was once more in its midst, but were also designed to entertain
and impress Mr. Hammond Chester, Ann's father, who had been
spending a couple of days in the metropolis preparatory to
departing for South America on one of his frequent trips. He was
very fond of Ann in his curious, detached way, though he never
ceased in his private heart to consider it injudicious of her not
to have been born a boy, and he always took in New York for a day
or two on his way from one wild and lonely spot to another, if he
could manage it.
The large drawing-room overlooking the Hudson was filled almost
to capacity with that strange mixture of humanity which Mrs. Pett
chiefly affected. She prided herself on the Bohemian element in
her parties, and had become during the past two years a human
drag-net, scooping Genius from its hiding-place and bringing it
into the open. At different spots in the room stood the six
resident geniuses to whose presence in the home Mr. Pett had such
strong objections, and in addition to these she had collected so
many more of a like breed from the environs of Washington Square
that the air was clamorous with the hoarse cries of futurist
painters, esoteric Buddhists, _vers libre_ poets, interior
decorators, and stage reformers, sifted in among the more
conventional members of society who had come to listen to them.
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