"An equal! Why, Martin Landis, you are an equal! If a good, honest country boy isn't as good as a butterfly city girl I'd like to know who is! Aren't your people and mine as good as any others in the whole world? Even if the men do eat in their shirt sleeves and the women can't tell an oyster fork from a salad one." The fine face of the girl was flushed and eager as she went on, "Of course, these days young people should learn all the little niceties of correct table manners so they can eat anywhere and not be embarrassed. But I'll never despise any middle-aged or old people just because they eat with a knife or pour coffee into a saucer or commit any other similar transgression. It's a matter of man-made style, after all. When our grannies were young the proper way to do was to pour coffee into the saucers. Why, we have a number of little glass plates made just for the purpose of holding the cup after the coffee had been poured into the saucer. The cup-plates saved the cloth from stains of the drippings on the cup. I heard a prominent lecturer say we should not be so quick to condemn people who do not eat as we think they should. He said, apropos of eating with a knife or, according to present usage, with a fork, that it's just a little matter of the difference between pitching it in or shoveling it in." Martin laughed. "There's nothing of the snob about you, is there? I believe you see the inside of people without much looking on the exterior." "I hope so," she said. "Shall we turn back now? I'm cold." She was cold, but it was an inward reaction from the joy of being with Martin again. His words about Isabel and his glad recounting of the hours he spent with her chilled the girl. She felt that he was becoming more deeply entangled in the web Isabel spun for him. To the country girl's observant, analytical mind it seemed almost impossible that a girl of Isabel's type could truly love a plain man like Martin Landis or could ever make him happy if she married him. "It's just one more conquest for her to boast about," Amanda thought. "Just as the mate of the Jack-in-the-pulpit invites the insects to her honey and then catches them in a hopeless trap, so women like Isabel play with men like Martin. No wonder the root of the Jack-in-the-pulpit is bitter--it's symbolic of the aftermath of the honeyed trap."