"Still for the sake of other possible victims--" "Never mind them, Archie," said Letitia promptly, "they must take care of themselves as we have had to do. Anyway, now that you are here, and that I have eased myself by telling you all, I feel better. And it is such a relief not to have a patient with a weak heart on one's hands. Positively, dear, I am relieved. It is as though I have shifted a burden. It is almost worth seven hundred and fifty dollars to feel comfortable. You really didn't need the gold whisky flask, and I can get along without the tortoise-shell comb. The diamond ring _is_ a blow, but I intend to forget it. I'll just put on my things and you shall take me out to dinner, and then we'll go to the theater and see something jolly, with rattle in it." "Sothern's playing _Hamlet_," I insinuated, "and Shakespeare always cheers you." "But he wouldn't to-night, Archie. Who shall minister to a mind be-cooked? One must be mentally serene to appreciate _Hamlet_. I want to forget Mrs. Potzenheimer, and although I adore classics, they don't exhilarate on occasions like these. Would you think me quite dreadful and illiterate, if, instead of _Hamlet_, I suggest--" "Mrs. Fiske in _Hedda Gabler_?" "No, dear, just--er--Weber and Fields'. Do you mind?" "Oh, Letitia," I said in a shocked voice, though I could scarcely repress a smile of joy, "I am amazed. I should never have thought it of you. Still, if you insist,--well, let us go to Weber and Fields'. We can leave when we are disgusted." "I shall stay till the end," announced Letitia firmly, "and I hope it lasts until midnight. That is the way I feel to-night." CHAPTER VIII While a well-selected little restaurant dinner undoubtedly loosens the trammels of a too obdurate and persistent domesticity, the restaurant breakfast can scarcely be said to be conducive to an overweening amiability. Those who have tried it will not be inclined to dispute the matter. It is in the early morn that the term restaurant seems singularly inappropriate. The luminous, glittering, chattering resort where, at night, one may throw off one's care and temporarily forget one's home and mother, is, in the forenoon, but--an eating house. One is there, in vulgar materialism--to eat! The boiled-egg moment, that the mere ethics of good taste assign to privacy--with the morning ablutions and the care of the teeth--is a tragedy when translated into publicity. Conviviality, at the boiled-egg moment, is an impossibility. Ordinary courtesy is abstruse and difficult. Silence, the morning papers, the birth of one's daily attitude--the natural cravings of the hour--give way to the gloomy desolation of the public resort. Cheek-by-jowl with other unfortunates, in whom it is hope to discover an interest--for altruism is not born until noon, and mere selfishness monopolizes the morning hours--the meal is a detestable torture, worthy of a place in the catalogue of mediæval horrors.