“Hungry!” shuddered Mrs. Hawarden, loath to come down to earth. “I should be feasting on the sunset. What more could anyone want?”
“Well, ma’am,” suggested Conover, dubiously, “if you leave it to me, I’d rather just now have a tripe sandwich.”
“Come, Jack,” said Mrs. Hawarden coldly. “I think we’ll go in.”
“Oh, how could you!” laughed Desirée, in mock despair, as Caleb and she followed. “Why, her very boat radiates disgust. She’ll never forgive you for spoiling her rhapsody. A tripe sandwich! How could—?”
“It was the first thing that came into my head,” he excused. “An’ this mountain air’s put an edge on my ap’tite that I could shave with. A tripe sandwich would taste good. I’m sorry if I—”
“If it had been anything less hideously plebeian!” she insisted. “Even roast shoulder of tripe would have sounded better. Oh, tripe doesn’t have shoulders, though, does it?”
“It may, for all I know,” he returned. “But, say, Dey, have I made you mort’fied? Honest, I didn’t mean to.”
“I ought to scold you,” she answered. “But, for letting me see that look on poor Mrs. Hawarden’s face, I forgive you everything.”
Jack Hawarden, entering Conover’s tent a half hour later, found the Fighter struggling into a dinner jacket.
“For heaven’s sake,” urged the lad, “take that thing off. Except at dances they’re never worn here. There’s a rumor that the boys ran a stranger into the lake, one summer, for coming to supper in evening dress.”