settled back in her chair with
folded arms regarding the scene with the impersonal amusement with which
she would have sat through a staged comedy. No sense of obligation
toward her host and hostess impelled her to do her share toward
lessening the strain, and Andy P. Symes felt a growing irritation at the
faint smile of superiority upon her face. She was the one person present
who might have helped him through the uncomfortable affair.

Formality was the keynote of the occasion. Ladies who had been at each
other's back door a few hours previous borrowing starch or sugar now
addressed each other in strained and distant tones while the men were
frankly dumb. It was a relief to everybody when a heaping platter of
fried chicken appeared upon the table followed by mounds of mashed
potatoes and giblet gravy which made the guests' eyes gleam like
bird-dogs gaunt from a run.

Fried chicken is only fried chicken to those who dwell in the country
where chickens scratch in every backyard, but to those who dwell where
they reckon time from the occasion when they last ate an egg, fried
chicken bears the same relation to other food that nightingales' tongues
bore to other dishes at epicurean Roman feasts. As a further evidence of
Symes's prodigality there was champagne in hollow-stemmed glasses
brought from the East.

It was a glorious feast with cold storage chicken expressed from the
Main Line and potatoes freighted up from the Mormon settlement a hundred
miles below.

"It's a durn shame," said Adolph Kunkel as he surreptitiously removed an
olive, "that the plums is spiled, for this is the best supper I ever
flopped my lip over."

Symes suppressed a groan.

Each guest devoted himself to his food with an abandon and singleness of
purpose which left no doubt as to his enjoyment, and the effort of old
Edouard Dubois to scrape the last vestige of potato from his plate
brought out a suggestion from Adolph Kunkel to leave the gilt design on
the bottom. And when tiny after-dinner coffee cups appeared, the guests
felt that a new and valuable experience was being added to their lives.

"Holy smoke--but that's stout!" hinted Mr. Terriberry after looking the
table over for the customary pitcher of tinned milk. But before Mr.
Symes could act upon the hint his brother-in-law's eyes began to water
and bulge. He groped for his napkin while he compressed his lips in an
heroic effort to retain the hot and bitter coffee, but instead he
gr