“Ash is a distinguished chemist, and after dining with Sorbonne professors at the Ritz, in Paris, I guess they won’t wilt before the luxuries of this house!”

“Don’t roar at me! By all means have them, if you insist. But how do you know they ever dined with any professors at any Ritz? Do they boast of things like that?”

“Ash and Martha have never boasted about anything! About the Ritz—I’m just imagining–-”

“Why should your Sorbonne professors want to dine with Dr. Davis? Is he that big a chemist? And if he is, why should he want to dine with us? All the chemistry we know is that salt isn’t any good in coffee.”

“I tell you, I’m not thinking of him as a chemist.”

“You didn’t tell me, but never mind that.”

“I think of him as about the most charming man I know.”

“You forget that I met him. He seemed a nice, civil person, but I didn’t notice that he was so reeking with charm.”

“Well, maybe you would have, if you’d looked at him carefully.”

“N’ doubt, n’ doubt. Well, we’ll have them here, and I’ll look at ‘em both carefully!”

No, the augury was not good. And Ash said, when he was invited by telephone, “Are you certain that Mrs. Kingsblood would like to have us?”

* * * * *

The Davises came, well-dressed, soft-voiced, attentive, everything perfect except that they never were really there. Most of the time, they spoke only in response to whatever Vestal might offer, and as there was very little offering, there was very little responding. Neil had to make talk for all of them, but he was not especially inventive.

Vestal was dreadful. She was too polite; she agreed with everything, without listening to what she was agreeing with.

“I guess the President is having quite a little trouble with all these strikes,” Neil tried.

“Yes, that’s so and–-Strikes, did you say?” mumbled Vestal.

“Oh, yes—strikes,” Ash achieved.

Before dinner, Ash and Martha had obediently taken cocktails, but they never quite finished them. “Just like poor relations—conciliatory,” Vestal spitefully muttered to Neil. He had done the ordering and laid the table, but she had cooked the dinner herself and, not listening to Martha’s shy offer to help, she served it, with a look which said to Neil, “Are you satisfied, my lord, now that you see me humbly waiting on these dark intruders?”

When the conversation had almost swooned and died, and no one took up any of Neil’s remarks about airplane service and the Junior College basketball team, Ash straightened up and began to talk, as an expert, about the future of plastics.

“They’re almost too practical,” he said. “We shall have bedrooms for a fairy princess, with concealed lights and transparent beds and cupboards—it will make all the previous conspicuous waste look utilitarian.”

“I take it you don’t approve of people having pretty things,” said Vestal, and that killed that.