"Oh, things in general. Come and dance this. I want to have a very earnest word with you, young Pat. Big things are in the wind." "You're very mysterious." "Ah!" said Hugo. Left alone at the table with nothing to entertain him but his thoughts, John came almost immediately to the conclusion that his first verdict on the Mustard Spoon had been an erroneous one. Looking at it superficially, he had mistaken it for rather an attractive place: but now, with maturer judgment, he saw it for what it was--a blot on a great city. It was places like the Mustard Spoon that made a man despair of progress. He disliked the clientèle. He disliked the head waiter. He disliked the orchestra. The clientèle was flashy and offensive and, as regarded the male element of it, far too given to the use of hair oil. The head waiter was a fat parasite who needed kicking. And, as for Ben Baermann's Collegiate Buddies, he resented the fact that they were being paid for making the sort of noises which he, when a small boy, had produced--for fun and with no thought of sordid gain--on a comb with a bit of tissue paper over it. He was brooding on the scene in much the same spirit of captious criticism as that in which Lot had once regarded the Cities of the Plain, when the Collegiate Buddies suddenly suspended their cacophony, and he saw Pat and Hugo coming back to the table. But the Buddies had only been crouching, the better to spring. A moment later they were at it again, and Pat, pausing, looked expectantly at Hugo. Hugo shook his head. "I've just seen Ronnie Fish up in the balcony," he said. "I positively must go and confer with him. I have urgent matters to discuss with the old leper. Sit down and talk to John. You've got lots to talk about. See you anon. And, if there's anything you want, order it, paying no attention whatever to the prices in the right-hand column. Thanks to Thos., I'm made of money to-night." Hugo melted away: Pat sat down: and John, with another abrupt change of mood, decided that he had misjudged the Mustard Spoon. A very jolly little place, when you looked at it in the proper spirit. Nice people, a distinctly lovable head waiter, and as attractive a lot of musicians as he remembered ever to have seen. He turned to Pat, to seek her confirmation of these views, and, meeting her gaze, experienced a rather severe shock. Her eyes seemed to have frozen over. They were cold and hard. Taken in conjunction with the fact that her nose turned up a little at the end, they gave her face a scornful and contemptuous look. "Hullo!" he said, alarmed. "What's the matter?" "Nothing." "Why are you looking like that?" "Like what?" "Well...." John had little ability as a word painter. He could not on the spur of the moment give anything in the nature of detailed description of the way Pat was looking. He only knew he did not like it. "I suppose you expected me to look at you 'with eyes overrunning with laughter'?" "Eh?"