And a man with the gray hair of a grandfather and the giggle of a cash-girl bounced in clamoring, "Mornin'--expected to have bruncheon alone--do we have some bridge? Oh, good morning, Mr. Daggett, how do you like Seattle? Oh, thanks so much, yes, just two." Then Milt ceased to keep track of the conversation, which bubbled over the omelets, and stewed over the kidneys, and foamed about the coffee, and clashed above a hastily erected bridge table, and altogether sounded curiously like four cars with four quite different things the matter with them all being tried out at once in a small garage. People flocked in, and nodded as though they knew one another too well to worry about it. They bowed to him charmingly, and instantly forgot him for the kidneys and sausages. He sat looking respectable and feeling lonely, by a cup of coffee, till Claire--dropping the highly unreal smile with which she had been listening to the elderly beau's account of a fishing-trip he hadn't quite got around to taking--slipped into a chair beside him and begged, "Are they looking out for you, Milt?" "Oh yes, thank you." "You haven't been to see me." "Oh no, but---- Working so darn hard." "What a strikingly original reason! But have you really?" "Honest." Suddenly he wanted--eternal man, forever playing confidential small boy to the beloved--to tell her about his classes and acquaintances; to get pity for his bare room and his home-cooking. But round them blared the brazen interest in kidneys, and as Claire glanced up with much brightness at another arrival, Milt lost momentum, and found that there was absolutely nothing in the world he could say to her. He made a grateful farewell to the omelets and kidneys, and escaped. He walked many miles that day, trying to remember how Claire looked. CHAPTER XXVII THE VICIOUSNESS OF NICE THINGS "What did you think of my nice Daggett boy?" Claire demanded of Eva Gilson, the moment bruncheon was over. "Which one was---- Oh, the boy you met on the road? Why, really, I didn't notice him particularly. I'd rather fancied from the way you referred to him that he was awfully jolly and forceful, but rather crude. But I didn't notice him at all. He seemed perfectly well-bred, but slightly heavy." "No, he isn't that---- He---- Why did you lead spades?" reflected Claire. They were in the drawing-room, resting after the tact and tumult of the bruncheon. Claire had been here long enough now for the Gilsons to forget her comfortably, and be affectionate and quarrelsome and natural, and to admit by their worrying that even in their exalted social position there were things to fuss about. "I do think we ought to have invited Belle Torrens," fretted Mrs. Gilson. "We've simply got to have her here soon."