At Miss Selene Coblenz's engagement reception, an event properly festooned with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of waiters tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and a finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra, faintly seen and still more faintly heard, played into the babel. Light, glitteringly filtered through the glass prisms, flowed down upon the dais; upon Miss Selene Coblenz, in a taffeta that wrapped her flat waist and chest like a calyx and suddenly bloomed into the full-inverted petals of a skirt; upon Mr. Lester Goldmark, his long body barely knitted yet to man's estate, and his complexion almost clear, standing omnivorous, omnipotent, omnipresent, his hair so well brushed that it lay like black japanning, a white carnation at his silk lapel, and his smile slightly projected by a rush of very white teeth to the very front. Next in line, Mrs. Coblenz, the red of a fervent moment high in her face, beneath the maroon-net bodice the swell of her bosom, fast, and her white-gloved hand constantly at the opening and shutting of a lace-and-spangled fan. Back, and well out of the picture, a potted hydrangea beside the Louis Quinze armchair, her hands in silk mitts laid out along the gold-chair sides, her head quavering in a kind of mild palsy, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, smiling and quivering her state of bewilderment. With an unfailing propensity to lay hold of to whomsoever he spake, Mr. Lester Goldmark placed his white-gloved hand upon the white-gloved arm of Mrs. Coblenz. "Say, Mother Coblenz, ain't it about time this little girl of mine was resting her pink-satin double A's? She's been on duty up here from four to seven. No wonder Uncle Mark bucked." Mrs. Coblenz threw her glance out over the crowded room, surging with a wave of plumes and clipped heads like a swaying bucket of water which crowds but does not lap over its sides. "I guess the crowd is finished coming in by now. You tired, Selene?" Miss Coblenz turned her glowing glance. "Tired! This is the swellest engagement-party I ever had." Mrs. Coblenz shifted her weight from one slipper to the other, her maroon-net skirts lying in a swirl around them. "Just look at gramaw, too! She holds up her head with the best of them. I wouldn't have had her miss this, not for the world." "Sure one fine old lady! Ought to have seen her shake my hand, Mother Coblenz. I nearly had to holler, 'Ouch!'" "Mama, here comes Sara Suss and her mother. Take my arm, Lester honey. People mama used to know." Miss Coblenz leaned forward beyond the dais with the frail curve of a reed. "Howdado, Mrs. Suss.... Thank you. Thanks. Howdado, Sara? Meet my _fiancé_, Lester Haas Goldmark; Mrs. Suss and Sara Suss, my _fiancé_.... That's right, better late than never. There's plenty left.... We think he is, Mrs. Suss. Aw, Lester honey, quit! Mama, here's Mrs. Suss and Sadie."