"What
do you say? Shall it be lobster?" He ordered the dinner, instructing the
waiter with painstaking gruffness.

"Not that they can touch _your_ cooking here, Miss Lulu," he said,
settling himself to wait, and crumbling a crust.

Dwight, expanding a bit in the aura of the food, observed that Lulu was
a regular chef, that was what Lulu was. He still would not look at his
wife, who now remarked:

"Sheff, Dwightie. Not cheff."

This was a mean advantage, which he pretended not to hear--another mean
advantage.

"Ina," said Lulu, "your hat's just a little mite--no, over the other
way."

"Was there anything to prevent your speaking of that before?" Ina
inquired acidly.

"I started to and then somebody always said something," said Lulu
humbly.

Nothing could so much as cloud Lulu's hour. She was proof against any
shadow.

"Say, but you look tremendous to-night," Dwight observed to her.

Understanding perfectly that this was said to tease his wife, Lulu yet
flushed with pleasure. She saw two women watching, and she thought:
"They're feeling sorry for Ina--nobody talking to her." She laughed at
everything that the men said. She passionately wanted to talk herself.
"How many folks keep going past," she said, many times.

At length, having noted the details of all the clothes in range, Ina's
isolation palled upon her and she set herself to take Ninian's
attention. She therefore talked with him about himself.

"Curious you've never married, Nin," she said.

"Don't say it like that," he begged. "I might yet."

Ina laughed enjoyably. "Yes, you might!" she met this.

"She wants everybody to get married, but she wishes I hadn't," Dwight
threw in with exceeding rancour.

They developed this theme exhaustively, Dwight usually speaking in the
third person and always with his shoulder turned a bit from his wife. It
was inconceivable, the gusto with which they proceeded. Ina had assumed
for the purpose an air distrait, casual, attentive to the scene about
them. But gradually her cheeks began to burn.

"She'll cry," Lulu thought in alarm, and said at random: "Ina, that hat
is so pretty--ever so much prettier than the old one." But Ina said
frostily that she never saw anything the matter with the old one.

"Let us talk," said Ninian low, to Lulu. "Then they'll simmer down."

He went on, in an undertone, about nothing in particular. Lulu hardly
heard what he said, it was so pleasant to have him talking to her in
th