"A vision of goblins," said the Mariner, when he had got his breath.
"What fun! But why do they do it?" asked Miss Rivers.
"Why? I'm sure I don't know," I laughed, "except because they always have, and I suppose always will, while there's a university at Leiden. That's all we'll see, but it isn't all there is to see. By-and-by the procession will go prancing back to the Club, where the next thing will be to get over the big reading-table, then over the buffet of the bar, without once breaking the chain of coat-tails, through passages and kitchens to the club-room once more, where the chain will be split up, but where the chairs in which the men will sit to drink champagne and eat the Nougat Tart, must be on the tables and not round them."
"And will that be the end?" inquired the Chaperon, who ever thirsts with ardor for information.
"Not nearly," said I. "The third part of dinner will be due, and every one's bound to eat it, even those whose chairs have fallen off from the pyramids of small tables, and whose heads or bones have suffered. They'll have dessert; and at dawn the best men will be taking a country drive."
"I begin to understand," said Starr, "how your people exhausted the Spaniards. Good heavens, you could wear out the Rock of Gibraltar! And I see why, though you can eat all day and all night too, you don't put on fat like your German cousins."
"When we begin a thing, we Dutchmen see it through," I replied modestly.
"So do we Americans," remarked Miss Van Buren.
"I wonder which would win if the two interests were opposed?" I hazarded, à propos of nothing—or of much.
"I should bet on America," said she.