Poynter could not be sure. He said in his delightfully naive way,
however, that a music-machine was a thing to arouse romance and
sympathy with conspicuous success, that more and more the moon was
getting him, and that he did hope Diane would remember that he was the
disguised Duke of Connecticut. Moreover, his most tantalizing
shortcoming up-to-date had seemed to be a total inability to arouse
said romance and sympathy, especially sympathy, for, whether or not
Diane would believe it, even here in this land of flowers he had
encountered frost! Wherefore, having personal knowledge of the success
incidental to unwinding a hullabaloo in proper costume, he had
purchased one from a--er--distinguished gentleman who for singular and
very private reasons had no further use for it. And though the
negotiations, for reasons unnamable, had had to be conducted with
infinite discretion through an unknown third person, he had eventually
found himself the possessor of the hullabaloo, to his great delight.
He had hullabalooed his way along the coast in the wake of a nomadic
friend, but deeming it wise to await the dispersal of frost strangely
engendered by a Regent's Hymn, had discreetly kept his distance and
proved his benevolence, in the manner of his distinguished predecessor,
by playing to all the nice old ladies in the dooryards.
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