ain over the four that have already
got to talking at the arrival of the two newcomers, and marshals them
out to the terrace where they are to have dinner. Without seeming
to try, he seats them so that Ted, Peter and Oliver will not form an
offensive-defensive alliance against the three who are strangers to them
by retailing New Haven anecdotes to each other for the puzzlement of
the rest and starts the ball rolling with a neat provocative attack on
romanticism in general and Cabell in particular.

II

"Johnny's strong for realism, aren't you, Johnny?"

"Well, yes, Ted, I am. I think 'Main Street' and 'Three Soldiers' are
two of the best things that ever happened to America. You can say it's
propaganda--maybe it is, but at any rate it's real. Honestly, I've
gotten so tired, we all have, of all this stuff about the small Middle
Western Town being the backbone of the country--"

"Backbone? Last vertebra!"

"As for 'Main Street,' it's--"

"It's the hardest book to read through without fallin' asleep where you
sit, though, that I've struck since the time I had to repeat Geology."
Peter smiles. "But, there, Johnny, I guess I'm the bone-head part of the
readin' public--"

"That's why you're just the kind of person that ought to read books like
that, Peter. The reading public in general likes candy laxatives, I'll
admit--Old Nest stuff--but you--"

"'Nobody else will ever have to write the description of a small Middle
Western Town'" quotes Oliver, discontentedly. "Well, who ever wanted to
write the description of a small Middle Western Town?" and from Ricky
French, selecting his words like flowers for a _boutonniere_.

"The trouble with 'Main Street' is not that it isn't the truth but that
it isn't nearly the whole truth. Now Sherwood Anderson--"

"Tennyson. Who _was_ Tennyson? He died young."

"Well, if _that_ is Clara Stratton's idea of how to play a woman who
did."

The two sentences seem to come from no one and arrive nowhere. They are
batted out of the conversation like toy balloons.

"Bunny Andrews sailed for Paris Thursday," says Ted Billett longingly.
"Two years at the Beaux Arts," and for an instant the splintering of
lances stops, like the hush in a tournament when the marshal throws down
the warder, at the shine of that single word.

"All the same, New York is the best place to be right now if you're
going to do anything big," says Johnny uncomfortably, too much as if he
felt he just had to