But instead of an explosion of applauding merriment came a ghastly silence. Mrs. Mosely tried to smile but turned a queer pea-green. The stout girl beside Nathan looked wildly around the table and jabbed her fork quickly into a morsel of roast. One of the men made a weird noise,—it sounded as though he had swallowed a worm, a long, upholstered, fuzzy one. A little red-haired girl giggled. And poor Nathan! Nathan was suddenly out on the bounding billows of a raging main looking avidly for a particularly inviting spot in which to drown with neatness and despatch. “How very interesting!” remarked Mrs. Mosely. She turned to her ever-present help in time of trouble,—the Old Gold Georgette. “Cynthia, my dear,” she suggested, “and suppose you tell us that other amusing anecdote about De Carter when he tried to find Mr. Whitesmith at the Hermitage, and ran into the character actor who looked just like him, you know!” Cynthia caught her cue and the cogs of the universe moved again. But it had been a hideous ten seconds while it lasted. Milly was the last to finish her food at each course and the dinner dragged in consequence. She never noted she was holding up the dinner. She essayed other conversation with the stout man after a time, waving choice morsels on her fork as she did so, before putting them into her mouth. Her knife leaned against her plate, or sprawled at rakish angles from other dishes. She felt, however, that those present had not appreciated the delicious comedy in her anecdote. “High-brow,” she snapped to herself. She decided she detested Mrs. Mosely, and as for the Cynthia person’s anecdote, it wasn’t funny at all. At the conclusion of the dinner Mrs. Mosely led the way into the drawing-room and left the men to cigars. The big double doors between the two apartments were then closed. Again Milly was “thrown on her own.” And—— She wished to Gawd she were home! If this were high life in the brilliant metropolis, give her good old Paris, where folks ate their food naturally and talked about subjects a body could understand: the weather, perhaps, the latest film at the Olympic, what bargains Michalman was showing in his basement, how many chops Bud Jones gave for a dollar. What fun was there sitting around like a lot of “dummies at a wake”, nibbling at a very little food in slathers of dishes, having so many forks it took all the joy out of eating to remember to use the right one, and made one’s head ache beside? What enjoyment was there for a woman to be stuck between two men whom she just knew wanted to talk business, and be stiff and uncomfortable and starched and nerve-racked to death for two mortal hours? Then a séance in the big room afterward and music on the piano that sounded like the player trying to see how many chords she could touch per minute or how many trick combinations of sounds she could manufacture on the keyboard? As for Milly, give her “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet”, or “Alexander’s Rag Time Band.”