My face was white, my hands cold, as I listened to Jim, but I controlled myself, and said, quietly:
"Thank you, Jim, very much for telling me, but I do not think it amounts to anything."
XXXII
"THE DEAREST FRIEND I EVER HAD"
Dinner with Dicky in a public dining room is almost always a delight to me. He has the rare art of knowing how to order a perfect dinner, and when he is in a good humor he is most entertaining. He knows by sight or by personal acquaintance almost every celebrity of the city, and his comments on them have an uncommon fascination for me because of the monotony of my life before I met Dicky.
But the very expression of my mother-in-law's back as I followed her through the glittering grill room of the Sydenham told me that our chances for having a pleasant evening were slender indeed.
"Well, mother, what do you want to eat?" Dicky began genially, when an obsequious waiter had seated us and put the menu cards before us.
"Please do not consider me in the least," my mother-in-law said with her most Christian-martyr-like expression. "Whatever you and Margaret wish will do very well for me."
Dicky turned from his mother with a little impatient shrug.
"What about you, Madge?" he asked.