“Yes, Mr. Kennedy. Certainly, Mr. Kennedy, I wasn’t here at the time, but—when I saw Mr. Husack—he’s one of our regulars of course, sometimes lunch and dinner—–”

“Listen to me. Mrs. Husack, I have taken the liberty of ordering the dinner, I find scattered ordering unsatisfactory, but if there is anything you do not approve, it can and will be changed.… Don’t take those lights away, man. And stand still.… I have ordered imported caviar, black—and I don’t mean salmon roe … martinis or vodka, though I’m taking bourbon and so can anyone else.… Three-inch steaks, so there’ll be plenty even for you, Dave, rare, medium, or well done. Those baked potatoes the way they do ’em here, mixed up with chives and little bits of bacon and brown on top. Mushrooms and peas. A big salad with Roquefort dressing. And for desert of course”—he looked around the table, he suddenly turned on them his winning smile like a light flashed on a dark room—“a baked Alaska.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Kennedy,” Emil agreed, smoothly.

Well, Chris thought, that’s telling ’em, Grampa Czar. She looked at him, a sparkling glance of impulsive admiration.

Czar looked at the girl, he spoke casually. “When our drinks arrive we’ll have a toast—–”

“—to the Buccaneer!” Dave finished for him.

Smoothly Czar continued as though Dave had not spoken “—to our most gracious friend, Louise Husack. And after that I’ll be glad if perhaps you, Bay, will propose a toast to our little student here, in good wishes for her first year at the great Washington University in Seattle.”

A moment of somewhat eerie silence fell upon the table.

“I love a man who can order a delicious dinner,” Dina said. Czar, seated at her left, did not turn his head. He seemed to be carefully considering—and rejecting—certain replies to this, none of which were flattering.

“Say, Czar, you must have been living high off the hog up there in Alaska,” Dave said.

“No. No, not exactly, Dave. We eat well, but plainly, you’d call it. There’s enough of most things, and more than enough, usually, but food comes high up there and we eat it with respect. I remember when the girls used to save the lettuce and use it for the next party, nobody’d be so mean as to eat it at a friend’s house.”

Emil put a tentative hand on the rose bowl, with an inquiring glance at Czar. Czar nodded, wordlessly. “Too bad,” Louise Husack said, with a somewhat poisonous glance at her husband. “I bet you don’t see roses like that up in Alaska.”

Christine’s low charming voice seemed to clear the air of embarrassment. “Not like those, Aunt Louise. Such dear little things. That’s the trouble with all our Alaska flowers, I suppose, except the tiny ones that grow on the tundra. The cabbages are as big as bushel baskets, the strawberries are three inches around and the delphinium grows nine feet high.”

Bay said, “I hope the Husack family knows when it’s licked.”