anchovies; a
marvelous nightmare-creating fruit cake to go with the whipped cream;
two quarts of a famous sherry; candied fruits in a silver box. Dinner
was served not on the dining-porch but before the fire in the
Barmberrys' living-room. Claire looked at the candied fruits, stared at
Jeff rather queerly--as though she was really thinking of some one
else--and mused:

"I didn't know I cared so much for these foolish luxuries. Tonight, I'd
like a bath, just a tiny bit scented, and a real dressing-table with a
triple mirror, and French talc, and come down in a dinner-gown---- Oh, I
have enjoyed the trip, Jeff. But my poor body does get so tired and
dusty, and then you treacherously come along with these things that
you've magicked out of the mountains and---- I'm not a pioneer woman,
after all. And Henry B. is not a caveman. See him act idolatrously
toward his soup."

"I feel idolatrous. I'd forgotten the supreme ethical importance of the
soup. I'll never let myself forget it again," said Mr. Boltwood, in the
tone of one who has come home.

Claire was grateful to Jeff that he did not let her go on being
grateful. He turned the talk to Brooklyn. He was neat and explicit--and
almost funny--in his description of an outdoor presentation of
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, in which a domestic and intellectual lady
weighing a hundred and eighty-seven stageside had enacted Puck. As they
sat after dinner, as Claire shivered, he produced a knitted robe, and
pulled it about her shoulders, smiling at her in a lonely, hungry way.
She caught his hand.

"Nice Jeff!" she whispered.

"Oh, my dear!" he implored. He shook his head in a wistful way that
caught her heart, and dutifully went back to informing Mr. Boltwood of
the true state of the markets.

"Talk to Claire too!" she demanded. She stopped, stared. From outside
she heard a nervous pit-pit-pit, a blurred dialogue between Mr. James
Barmberry and another man. Into the room rambled Milt Daggett, dusty of
unpressed blue suit, tired of eyes, and not too well shaved of chin,
grumbling, "Thought I'd never catch up with you, Claire---- Why----"

"Oh! Oh, Milt--Mr. Daggett---- Oh, Jeff, this is our good friend Milt
Daggett, who has helped us along the road."

Jeff's lucid rimless spectacles stared at Milt's wind-reddened eyes; his
jaunty patch-pocket outing clothes sniffed at Milt's sweater; his even
voice followed Milt's grunt of surprise with a curt "Ah. Mr. Daggett."

"Pleased m