“Tell you what we'll do,” Virginia's friend proposed, opera cloak tight under one arm, velvet gown as tight under the other, “I'm tired--hungry--thirsty; feel like a ham sandwich--and something. I'm playing you out, too. Let's go out and get a bite and come back for the so, so, _so_ perfect hat.” She hesitated. But he had the door open, and if he stood holding it that way much longer he was bound to drop the violet velvet gown. She did not want him to drop the velvet gown and furthermore, she _would_ like a cup of tea. There came into her mind a fortifying thought about the relative deaths of sheep and lambs. If to be killed for the sheep were indeed no worse than being killed for the lamb, and if a cup of tea went with the sheep and nothing at all with the lamb--? So she agreed. “There's a nice little tea-shop right round the corner. We girls often go there.” “Tea? Like tea? All right, then”--and he started manfully on. But as she entered the tea-shop she was filled with keen sense of the desirableness of being slain for the lesser animal. For, cosily installed in their favourite corner, were “the girls.” Virginia had explained to these friends some three hours before that she could not go with them that afternoon as she must attend a musicale some friends of her mother's were giving. Being friends of her mother's, she expatiated, she would have to go. Recollecting this, also for the first time remembering the musicale, she bowed with the _hauteur_ of self-consciousness. Right there her friend contributed to the tragedy of a sheep's death by dropping the yellow opera cloak. While he was stooping to pick it up the violet velvet gown slid backward and Virginia had to steady it until he could regain position. The staring in the corner gave way to tittering--and no dying sheep had ever held its head more haughtily. The death of this particular sheep proved long and painful. The legs of Virginia's friend and the legs of the tea-table did not seem well adapted to each other. He towered like a human mountain over the dainty thing, twisting now this way and now that. It seemed Providence--or at least so much of it as was represented by the management of that shop--had never meant fat people to drink tea. The table was rendered further out of proportion by having a large box piled on either side of it. Expansively, and not softly, he discoursed of these things. What did they think a fellow was to do with his _knees_? Didn't they sell tea enough to afford any decent chairs? Did all these women pretend to really _like_ tea? Virginia's sense of humour rallied somewhat as she viewed him eating the sandwiches. Once she had called them doll-baby sandwiches; now that seemed literal: tea-cups, _petit gateau_, the whole service gave the fancy of his sitting down to a tea-party given by a little girl for her dollies. But after a time he fell silent, looking around the room. And when he broke that pause his voice was different.