“Mean to imply I make a hog of myself, eating down-town? Yes, sure! You’d have a swell time if you had to eat the truck that new steward hands out to us at the Athletic Club! But I certainly do feel out of sorts, this morning. Funny, got a pain down here on the left side--but no, that wouldn’t be appendicitis, would it? Last night, when I was driving over to Verg Gunch’s, I felt a pain in my stomach, too. Right here it was--kind of a sharp shooting pain. I-- Where’d that dime go to? Why don’t you serve more prunes at breakfast? Of course I eat an apple every evening--an apple a day keeps the doctor away--but still, you ought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads.” “The last time I had prunes you didn’t eat them.” “Well, I didn’t feel like eating ’em, I suppose. Matter of fact, I think I did eat some of ’em. Anyway-- I tell you it’s mighty important to-- I was saying to Verg Gunch, just last evening, most people don’t take sufficient care of their diges--” “Shall we have the Gunches for our dinner, next week?” “Why sure; you bet.” “Now see here, George: I want you to put on your nice dinner-jacket that evening.” “Rats! The rest of ’em won’t want to dress.” “Of course they will. You remember when you didn’t dress for the Littlefields’ supper-party, and all the rest did, and how embarrassed you were.” “Embarrassed, hell! I wasn’t embarrassed. Everybody knows I can put on as expensive a Tux. as anybody else, and I should worry if I don’t happen to have it on sometimes. All a darn nuisance, anyway. All right for a woman, that stays around the house all the time, but when a fellow’s worked like the dickens all day, he doesn’t want to go and hustle his head off getting into the soup-and-fish for a lot of folks that he’s seen in just reg’lar ordinary clothes that same day.” “You know you enjoy being seen in one. The other evening you admitted you were glad I’d insisted on your dressing. You said you felt a lot better for it. And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn’t say ‘Tux.’ It’s ‘dinner-jacket.’” “Rats, what’s the odds?” “Well, it’s what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile McKelvey heard you calling it a ‘Tux.’” “Well, that’s all right now! Lucile McKelvey can’t pull anything on me! Her folks are common as mud, even if her husband and her dad are millionaires! I suppose you’re trying to rub in _your_ exalted social position! Well, let me tell you that your revered paternal ancestor, Henry T., doesn’t even call it a ‘Tux.’! He calls it a ‘bobtail jacket for a ringtail monkey,’ and you couldn’t get him into one unless you chloroformed him!” “Now don’t be horrid, George.”