So they had in for dinner certain friends and acquaintances of fitting age. They spoke of them as "splendid girls." Between thirty-six and forty. They talked awfully well, in a firm, clear way, about civics, and classes, and politics, and economics, and boards. They rather terrified Jo. He didn't understand much that they talked about, and he felt humbly inferior, and yet a little resentful, as if something had passed him by. He escorted them home, dutifully, though they told him not to bother, and they evidently meant it. They seemed capable, not only of going home quite unattended, but of delivering a pointed lecture to any highwayman or brawler who might molest them. The following Thursday Eva would say, "How did you like her, Jo?" "Like who?" Jo would spar feebly. "Miss Matthews." "Who's she?" "Now, don't be funny, Jo. You know very well I mean the girl who was here for dinner. The one who talked so well on the immigration question." "Oh, her! Why, I liked her all right. Seems to be a smart woman." "Smart! She's a perfectly splendid girl." "Sure," Jo would agree cheerfully. "But didn't you like her?" "I can't say I did, Eve. And I can't say I didn't. She made me think a lot of a teacher I had in the fifth reader. Name of Himes. As I recall her, she must have been a fine woman. But I never thought of her as a woman at all. She was just Teacher." "You make me tired," snapped Eva impatiently. "A man of your age. You don't expect to marry a girl, do you? A child!" "I don't expect to marry anybody," Jo had answered. And that was the truth, lonely though he often was. The following spring Eva moved to Winnetka. Anyone who got the meaning of the Loop knows the significance of a move to a North Shore suburb, and a house. Eva's daughter, Ethel, was growing up, and her mother had an eye on society. That did away with Jo's Thursday dinner. Then Stell's husband bought a car. They went out into the country every Sunday. Stell said it was getting so that maids objected to Sunday dinners, anyway. Besides, they were unhealthy, old-fashioned things. They always meant to ask Jo to come along, but by the time their friends were placed, and the lunch, and the boxes, and sweaters, and George's camera, and everything, there seemed to be no room for a man of Jo's bulk. So that eliminated the Sunday dinners. "Just drop in any time during the week," Stell said, "for dinner. Except Wednesday--that's our bridge night--and Saturday. And, of course, Thursday. Cook is out that night. Don't wait for me to phone." And so Jo drifted into that sad-eyed, dyspeptic family made up of those you see dining in second-rate restaurants, their paper propped up against the bowl of oyster crackers, munching solemnly and with indifference to the stare of the passer-by surveying them through the brazen plate-glass window.