Presently the car pulled up before an ordinary-looking chop house, and Barry jumped out, helping Aunt Micky to alight. She stared in through the open windows, beyond which rows of tables might be seen, some already occupied; she glanced up at the signboard and looked into the narrow doorway. “Hardly Ritzy,” she commented. “Not to look at,” Barry admitted. “But the wine is _bon_; so are the liqueurs.” “Ah, well,” his aunt mused, “sin leads our footsteps into strange bypaths.” They went in. Barry had reserved a table to which a very gentlemanly Irishman conducted them. “Haven’t my friends arrived, Pat?” Barry inquired. “No, Mr. Cumberland. But you are a shade early.” Barry glanced at his watch and then at the clock. “You are right,” he agreed. “What about two special cocktails?” “Precisely,” his aunt inquired, ignoring all offers of assistance and throwing her cavalry cloak across the back of a chair--“precisely what is a ‘special cocktail’?” “It is clearly indicated to-night,” Barry assured her. “Then let it be brought,” said Aunt Micky. The cocktails had just been served and Barry was studying the menu when Jim appeared in the open doorway, staring from table to table in quest of his party. Beside him stood a pretty girl wearing a very modern dance frock, a fragment of silvery gauze. Barry stood up, waving, and Aunt Micky shaded her eyes with her hand, a mannerism indicating disapproval. She drew a deep breath as the new arrivals approached, Jack Lorrimer observed of many observers. “H’m,” she murmured--“silver currency coming in again. Young Lorrimer has a dollar in front, a dollar behind and no change. Barry, the girl’s nude!” “Shut up, Micky!” said her embarrassed nephew. “Hello, Jack! Hello, Jim! They are bringing your cocktails.” When everyone was seated, Aunt Micky shaded her eyes again, surveying Jack from shingled nut-brown hair downward to the table edge. “Are you liking my frock,” the girl asked, “or hating it?” “Neither,” was the reply. “I am looking for it.” Jim applauded softly, and Jack turned to Barry for sympathy, leaning forward so that two curly heads were very close together. “Do _you_ see anything wrong with me?” she pleaded. Jim watched in tragic disapproval, then rested his hand upon Aunt Micky’s shoulder. “Look at them!” he said--“admired, self-satisfied--pink and white. Micky, we brunettes must hang together!” The dinner turned out a great success. Aunt Micky followed a routine on these occasions: drinking red wine because of its pleasing resemblance to blood, eating a prodigious quantity of celery, taking the blue-plate item in the menu regardless of its constitution, and winding up with rum omelette in flames, because it was “so hellish.” The notorious play bored her. “I am going home to read in bed,” she declared, as they waited outside the theatre for the car. “I shall read _The Sorrows of Satan_, by Marie Corelli.”