About this time the era of indigestion and temperament came along, the era when Teddie began to betray an abnormal interest in what might repose on the _buffet_, and queen-olives fought with chocolate éclairs, and pickled walnuts combined with _biscuit Tortoni_ to dispute the ventral supremacy of broiled mushrooms. It was the era when capon-wings and melon mangoes were apt to be found wrapped up in embroidered towels with insets of Venetian lace, and tucked in under the edges of the oppressively big colonial mahogany bed with the pineapple posts, and bonbon-boxes obtruded from the corners of a much becushioned _bergère_, and salted almonds mysteriously transferred themselves from below stairs to the lacquered jewel-box in a lilac-tinted boudoir. This occurred about the time that her mother so zealously took up the study of genealogy and had an entirely new crest made for the family stationery and even neglected her club work and her charity organizations to trace out the little-known intermarriages in the house of the Romanoffs. And it was about the same time that her dreamy-eyed father, who had been born to more millions than he cared to count, “gave up dining out to count electrons,” as Uncle Chandler expressed it. For Teddie’s father was an amateur mathematician and scientist who had made two highly important discoveries in light-deflection, highly important in only an abstract and theoretical way, as he was at pains to point out, since like the Einstein Theory they could never by any manner or means affect any object or any person on this terrestrial globe. It was sufficient, however, to convert him into what Uncle Chandler denominated as “an eclipse-hound,” which meant that he and his complicated photographic paraphernalia went dreamily and repeatedly off to Arizona or upper Brazil or Egypt or the Island of Principe.