This claimed a penny from whomsoever entering Mrs. Cartwright's abode should make any allusion to a subject which she declared was now inadmissibly boring: namely, food. One met quite intelligent people who became hopelessly tedious about "recipes," "how they managed," and so on. Rations had to be; and catering, food-cards, and substitute foods. But why intensify the Unspeakable by unnecessary speaking about it? Hence this box. She took Mr. Brown's penny (a fine for some cheese anecdote or other), rattled the box, and glanced, as usual without seeming to do so, at her other guests. Next to young Ellerton sat a niece of her own; a pretty girl in grey and scarlet nursing kit; the red- and blue _artilleriste_ uniform of Gustave Tronchet next; delighting the eyes of his _fiancée_ opposite. Agatha Walsh had taken off years, Mrs. Cartwright thought, since they had parted at Les Pins. In place of the "old-maid" look, she was acquiring that of the young and prosperous woman--her smile seeming not yet entirely her own, and she had a new gesture or two modelled on those of Madame Leroux, her aunt-to-be. Also, her speech was altered. Some one must have rallied her on her "English" habit of beginning every sentence with "Oh"----Mrs. Cartwright missed it as she caught fragments of Miss Walsh's talk to Jack Awdas, who sat on her left. "Now could _you_ tell me, Mr. Awdas, the really best sort of man's wrist watch?... I want to get a really _special_ one for Gustave--it is his '_fête_' on Thursday ... not time to engrave anything, I'm afraid.... Ah, yes, if you could come with me on Monday, you and Miss van Huysen, to help choose! That would be so amiable of you--nice, I mean. So stupid of me. I _keep_ putting in the French words for things always, now! "Ah, a bracelet-watch like yours, that would be perfect.... "Was there a _cadeau de fiançailles_--let's see, what do you call it in English, an engagement present?" And she put her carefully dressed head on one side as she inspected the watch that Jack Awdas, smiling, held out towards her. Jack was silent this evening, Mrs. Cartwright had noticed already, as she noticed every detail, still, of the young flyer's looks and manner.... He was in some happy abstraction, she saw, worlds away from the brightly-lighted table thronged with these young people chattering over their grapes and oranges.... There was a light behind those horizon-blue eyes of his even when they were not turned upon the sweetheart at his other side. There was an undernote of something new and joyous in the tone of his voice as he spoke to her. ("What _d'you_ think about it, girl?") From the Sunburst Girl, as ever, a radiance seemed to emanate that was more than the effulgence of her white-and-golden dress. But she, too, was quieter than usual as she sat; now giving a little friendly smile to her hostess across Captain Ross and his dogmas, now leaning to the right and putting in a word about the matter of the engagement present.