As they went in to dinner, Mr. Winslow taking in Aunt Emma like a small boy accompanying the school principal, Ruth had the chance to whisper: "My Hawk, be good. Please believe I'm not responsible. It's all Aunt Emma's doing, this dreadfully stately family dinner. Don't let her bully you. I'm frightened to death and----Yes, Phil, I'm coming." The warning did not seem justified in view of the attractive table--candles, cut glass, a mound of flowers on a beveled mirror, silvery linen, and grape-fruit with champagne. Carl was at one side of Aunt Emma, but she seemed more interested in Mr. Winslow, at the end of the table; and on his other side Carl had a safe companion in Olive Dunleavy. Across from him were Florence Crewden, Phil, and Ruth--Ruth shimmering in a gown of yellow satin, which broke the curves of her fine, flushed shoulders only by a narrow band. The conversation played with people. Florence Crewden told, to applause and laughter, of an exploratory visit to the College of the City of New York, and her discovery of a strange race, young Jews mostly, who went to college to study, and had no sense of the nobility of "making" fraternities. "Such outsiders!" she said. "Can't you imagine the sort of a party they'd have--they'd all stand around and discuss psychology and dissecting puppies and Greek roots! Phil, I think it would be a lovely punishment for you to have to join them--to work in a laboratory all day and wear a celluloid collar." "Oh, I know their sort; 'greasy grinds' we used to call them; there were plenty of them in Yale," condescended Phil. "Maybe they wear celluloid collars--if they do--because they're poor," protested Ruth. "My dear child," sniffed Aunt Emma, "with collars only twenty-five cents apiece? Don't be silly!" Mr. Winslow declared, with portly timidity, "Why, Em, my collars don't cost me but fifteen----" "Mason dear, let's not discuss it at dinner.... Tell me, all of you, the scandal I've missed by going to California. Which reminds me; did I tell you I saw that miserable Amy Baslin, you remember, that married the porter or the superintendent or something in her father's factory? I saw her and her husband at Pasadena, and they seemed to be happy. Of course Amy would put the best face she could on it, but they must have been miserably unhappy--such a sad affair, and she could have married quite decently." "What do you mean by 'decently'?" Ruth demanded. Carl was startled. He had once asked Ruth the same question about the same phrase. Aunt Emma revolved like a gun-turret getting Ruth's range, and remarked, calmly: "My dear child, you know quite well what I mean. Don't, I beg of you, bring any socialistic problems to dinner till you have really learned something about them.... Now I want to hear all the nice scandals I have missed."