Sylvia was confronted with a youth who reddened under her greeting and awkwardly held out a damp coarse hand, a poor creature with an insipid face, coarse hair, and manner of great discomfort. He was as tall as Parminter, but wore his good clothes with Sunday air, and having been introduced to Sylvia could find no word to say to her. "Well, let us go in to supper," said her father, and he held open the door for her to pass. Sylvia went into the dining-room across the narrow hall, where a cold supper was laid upon a round table. In spite of her resolve to see all things in a rosy light, she grew conscious, in spite of herself, that she was disappointed in her father's friends. She was perplexed, too. He was so clearly head and shoulders above his associates, that she wondered at their presence in his house. Yet he seemed quite content, and in a most genial mood. "You sit here, Sylvia, my dear," he said, pointing to a chair. "Wallie"--this to the youth Hine--"sit beside my daughter and keep her amused. Barstow, you on the other side; Parminter next to me." He sat opposite Sylvia and the rest took their places, Hine sidling timidly into his chair and tortured by the thought that he had to amuse this delicate being at his side. "The supper is on the table," said Garratt Skinner. "Parminter, will you cut up this duck? Hine, what have you got in front of you? Really, this is so exceptional an occasion that I think--" he started up suddenly, as a man will with a new and happy idea--"I certainly think that for once in a way we might open a bottle of champagne." Surprise and applause greeted this brilliant idea, and Hine cried out: "I think champagne fine, don't you, Miss Skinner?" He collapsed at his own boldness. Parminter shrugged his shoulders to show that champagne was an every-day affair with him. "It's drunk a good deal at the clubs nowadays," he said. Meanwhile Garratt Skinner had not moved. He stood looking across the table to his daughter. "What do you say, Sylvia? It's an extravagance. But I don't have such luck every day. It's in your honor. Shall we? Yes, then!" He did not wait for an answer, but opened the door of a cupboard in the sideboard, and there, quite ready, stood half a dozen bottles of champagne. A doubt flashed into Sylvia's mind--a doubt whether her father's brilliant idea was really the inspiration which his manner had suggested. Those bottles looked so obviously got in for the occasion. But Garratt Skinner turned to her apologetically, as though he divined her thought. "We don't run to a wine cellar, Sylvia. We have to keep what little stock we can afford in here." Her doubt vanished, but in an instant it returned again, for as her father came round the table with the bottle in his hand, she noticed that shallow champagne glasses were ready laid at every place. Garratt Skinner filled the glasses and returned to his place.