“I have taken up cookery. You know I’m a southerner and though I’ve been here for many years, I’ve never got used to Irish servants. I simply can’t manage them! My cooks won’t cook as I tell them to. And last year, I had gone without hoe-cake as long as I could bear it, so I simply went to the kitchen one Thursday and made myself hoe-cake. Ever since then, I’ve spent every Thursday experimenting. I’m always saying to Hopestill that she ought to take it up.”

The woman gave Hope a humorous wink which missed fire and received no response. She went on, “Of course no one north of the Mason-Dixon Line knows how to cook.”

Hopestill’s voice was suddenly raised and I had the feeling that what she said had no part in her conversation with Philip but was merely thrown out as a bait. “It’s a nuisance finding a restaurant when one’s dining with a Negro.”

The doctor, taking up her game, maliciously replied, “An awful nuisance. It’s simpler just to dine at home.”

Mrs. Choate paled. But though her face, a large and youthful one, wore a hurt, quizzical look, she said determinedly to me, “Perhaps you’ll come to me some Thursday for a meal of greens and spareribs. My soups and desserts are not strictly southern, for I invent things, but the main course is always authentic.”

“I had a splendid time at his apartment in Harlem . . .” Hope was saying.

Rebuffed, Mrs. Choate rose. “I’m going to interrupt that conference of the experts over there. I want to tell Miss Pride my latest discovery. I have invented a divine egg, poached in thinned tomato paste.”

Hope grimaced, composed her features, and said to the outsider, “Oh, Mrs. Choate, I hear you’ve turned cook. I’m fascinated. Do you really make corn-pone and all those amazing things?”

But the woman was on her guard. “It is nice to see you looking so well, Hope,” she said. “Philip, how is your dear mother?”

“Mother is very well,” he replied. “She has almost lost her British accent.”

Mrs. Choate smiled sickly and took her leave.

“She isn’t southern at all,” explained Hopestill to me in a whisper. “She’s just a terrible fake. You’d think she’d been born with a mint julep in her hand and a fine old southern grudge against the damned Yankees that did in her granddaddy’s plantation. My Aunt Lucy, who can’t stomach her and couldn’t from the very first, found out that she lived in New Orleans for ten years before coming here but before that lived in California! But did we sound too beastly?”

They had, indeed, sounded beastly to me and I had suffered as much discomfiture as Mrs. Choate. I could not answer but instead inquired, “Is she the Countess’ friend, then?”