Mrs. Underbunk said that I contradicted myself, for I had remarked some time ago that if a man could not be smart he should be famous, to which I replied that a great astronomer was happy in his observatory because he had nothing else, and occasionally discovered a new star and got a paragraph notice in the papers, while with an automobile, and the money to run it properly and to subscribe to a clipping bureau, his vanity would be tickled daily with column-accounts of his breaking records, of his arrests for over-speeding, and his protests against the cruel laws. Yet, I argued on, smartness was an intangible virtue. It was not right to say that only by money could it be won, for there were in society a considerable number of persons who seemed to lack everything, even family, that most easily attained of all social virtues. There, for example, was Horatio Gastly, dancing attendance on old Mrs. Plumstone. He had only a few thousand a year, spent his days stretching ticker-tape, his late afternoons at the Cholmondeley Club, and his evenings in the smartest houses in town. He got into the Cholmondeley simply because nobody had ever heard of him. A counterpart in the fair sex was Sally Bilberry, who almost supported herself playing bridge. She had sailed in on the tail of the Plasters' kite. It seems that they owed her something, as old Mr. Plaster had at one time been her father's gardener, and as she is always ready to make a fourth and knows one or two awfully clever stories, she is quite a favorite. "Ah, Mr. Mudison," said Mrs. Underbunk, "I fear you are a sad cynic." "Not a cynic," said I. "On the contrary, I am rising as a defender. Those who attack us most are those who have tried to get in and cannot." "The bee scorns the butterfly," said she. "Yet the butterfly's brain is as big as the bee's," said I, as quick as a flash. Sometimes I quite surprise myself. For a few moments Mrs. Underbunk was silent and seemed to be listening to the music or the whispering in the next box. Roardika was making a great hit in the scene in _Isolde's_ garden, and for a time even I was content to listen silently. I have never been a devotee of Wagner, but I must admit that there are spots in "Tristan" where the singing is music, and I can lean back and enjoy it, with eyes closed to shut out the absurd sight of the princess and her clandestine caller awakening with melody the forest in which her husband is hunting. Gladys Underbunk and I thoroughly agree. When Dumple began to make coins disappear in the air to an accompaniment of "michs" and "dichs" and "sichs," she turned to me and whispered, "Do you know, Mr. Mudison, I sometimes wonder why a man of your lovable nature has never married." "My bachelor vows have been strangely shaken of late," I whispered back. Thereupon she chastised my knee delicately with her fan. "Seriously?" she said.