Her party, at her flat in Westminster, had arrived at the stage of the feast when tongues were loosed and the young guests were gossiping and chirruping in merry twos and threes.
Little Mr. Brown was beamingly loquacious in spite of the absence of his khakied fiancée, kept out of town that evening on late duty. Between Mr. Brown and the fresh-faced naval boy, Mr. Ellerton sat little Olwen Howel-Jones, enjoying herself without disguise and looking her very best. She was a girl who had "days"; this was one of them. Never had her glossy black hair "gone up" so well, or her face lighted up so vividly; never, against her pale skin, had her laughing mouth bloomed in such a carnation-red. Never had any dress suited her so well as that flapper's frock of succory-blue with touches of cream, and dull pink. It was the frock Mrs. Cartwright had worn once on Biscay beach; she had pressed it upon Olwen as she said good-bye at Les Pins, telling her it was a young girl's colour after all. There Olwen sat in it now, laughing and being talked to by two young men at once and looking a picture in it....
It was from this picture that Captain Ross's dark eyes looked so pertinaciously away, as with new sardonic energy he informed Mrs. Cartwright that by the time a man had learnt to handle women he'd learnt that their place in his life was not all that important that he wanted to handle them at all.
Mrs. Cartwright passed him the Sauterne.
"Thank goodness that there is at least enough to drink," she reflected with a quick whimsical glance about the well-cleared dishes on her supper-table that had held:
1. Remains of chicken, with an intolerable deal of rice and curry to a very little fowl.
2. Allotment potatoes.
3. A pound of Normandy butter bought that morning in Boulogne and brought over in Sergeant Tronchet's haversack.
4. Pease-pudding.
5. Beetroot....
6. Green salad.
Well, they'd seemed to enjoy what there was.
"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, here catching a remark from over the table. "A penny from you, Mr. Brown!" And she pushed over to him a money-box with the Blue Cross upon it, known as "The Fine-box."
This claimed a penny from whomsoever entering Mrs. Cartwright's abode should make any allusion to a subject which she declared was now inadmissibly boring: namely, food. One met quite intelligent people who became hopelessly tedious about "recipes," "how they managed," and so on. Rations had to be; and catering, food-cards, and substitute foods. But why intensify the Unspeakable by unnecessary speaking about it? Hence this box.
She took Mr. Brown's penny (a fine for some cheese anecdote or other), rattled the box, and glanced, as usual without seeming to do so, at her other guests.