The girl shot a quick, dubious, searching glance at me. I met it steadily, and she turned her eyes away. Again she looked at me, and my gaze apparently reassured her, for she gave me her hand in a very unaffected manner, and we went through a living-room into a simply furnished dining-room. It much resembled one of my own century, except that the furniture was in good taste; the curves and spirals and volutes of our machine-carved chairs and tables were gone; the wall was of a plain gray, without paper or pictures; the carpet was plain, and the absence of curls and twists even on the handles of the cutlery was extraordinarily restful. Between the two rooms was a small enclosed space containing a telephone funnel with knobs and levers disposed about it, and a dumb-waiter. The table linen was of a peculiar lusterless black. Looking out of the window, I saw that the uppermost street ran past it, and occasionally the hatless head of a pedestrian appeared. “Anything new to you, Arnold?” inquired my host, as we took our places at the table. “Principally the color of the table linen,” I answered. “Black seems strange to me.” “Black! Do you call that black?” asked David in surprise. “Why, that is mull, and not at all like black to me. For my part I prefer the old-fashioned white, but two years ago, when the plans to dress us in mull instead of blue were rescinded, the Wool and Linen bosses had accumulated a large quantity of mull goods in the warehouses on speculation, the loss of which would have hurt them badly—so we were asked to use mull-colored table linen.” “Do you like chicken?” inquired Elizabeth. “It is of last year’s freezing, and I got it as a special favor, for the supply for 34–5 is not yet exhausted, and they are supposed not to draw on the new cellars. If father had told me that he was going to bring home a guest—” “But I didn’t know it myself,” said David. “Of course, I could have telephoned, but—” “Never do that!” exclaimed Elizabeth impetuously; and I saw the look of fear upon her face again. A bell sounded, the shaft door clicked open, and a tray lay in the orifice. Elizabeth carried it to the table, and a well-cooked meal was smoking before us. “You may be surprised to know that this tea was made two miles away,” said David, “in the district sub-kitchen. It came to us at seventy miles an hour. Before we had the gyroscopic attachments, fluids were occasionally spilled.” “And how do you clean the apartment?” I asked Elizabeth. “In the old-fashioned way,” she answered, smiling. “I am an expert with the solar vacuum and duster.” “I believe our friend is accustomed to the existence of a servant class,” said David, laughing at me. But there was a subdued melancholy about him, as well as about Elizabeth. The sense of it, and the constraint it bred, grew on me momentarily. After dinner the dishes were sent down the shaft, and David handed me a typical twentieth-century cigar.