She unfastened the belt at her waist and threw it on the table. "Mary says there's more of it than I know, and maybe there is--maybe there is! But won't Benny Brickhouse be raging when he leaves here to-night! He's been smacking his lips and patting his stomach all day over the thought of a Gault dinner. I know he has. Terrapin and canvas-backs, champagne, and Nesselrode pudding are all a jumble in his mind this minute. And to give him vegetable soup and ham and cabbage and half-cooked goose!" She beat the arm of her chair and screwed her eyes tight in anticipation of his disappointment, then again nodded to the face in the mirror. "Next time, Mr. Benjamin Brickhouse, you will probably be more careful how you talk of ladies. Miss Gibbie Gault is a stingy old cat, is she? She's too free in her speech for you, talks too plainly, is a dangerous old woman with advanced views, is she? And she oughtn't to have let a young girl like Mary Cary go before a lot of men and talk as she talked last Monday night in the council chamber, ought she? But she knows how to give a good dinner all right. You'll give her credit for that. The trouble with people who make remarks about cats is they forget cats have claws, and the trouble with Mr. Benjamin Brickhouse is he made his remarks to Puss Jenkins. Percolator Puss can't keep from telling her own age, and a woman who does that who's still hoping isn't responsible for the words of her mouth. "And Snobby Deford will be here, too. She has heard I entertained lords and ladies in London and is anxious to see how I do it. I'll show her how I don't. I'm an old crank who tries to ride rough-shod over everybody, she says, and I spend much too much money on my table; but if I do it she don't mind eating my good things. Don't she? Well, she'll get a chance to-night. In Miss Patty Moore's millinery store she strew these posies at me, and Annie Steele caught them. Assenting Annie didn't throw any back, as Annie is merely as assenter, but neither of the honorable ladies who were coming to break my bread knew that Susie McDougal's ears were hearing ears. Susie says pompous-class people often act as if plainer-class ones weren't made of flesh and blood. "And Mrs. Deford thinks, with Mr. Brickhouse, that there's to be champagne to-night. She is fond of cocktails and champagne--things I prefer women not to care for--but she will get neither here. A mistake never escapes her eagle eye, and the use of the wrong knife or fork is a shuddering crime. If Jackson would drop one or the other down the back of that very low-neck dress she wears so much I'd give him an extra dollar. I don't suppose I ought to mention it but"--she took up a piece of paper on the table at her side and examined it carefully--"if it could be arranged--" She waved the paper in the air. "Now that is as good and wholesome a bunch of women as are on earth! And they aren't stupid, either. Pity so many good people are dull!"