“What do you mean?”
“If you’re thinking about our friends opposite, don’t get too sympathetic. They’re no more widows than I am. Camouflage. It’s the style. But they’re overdoing it. Everybody’s next, now, even us Americans. Bait, sonny, bait, that’s what it is.”
Bert looked over at the widows and smiled, and the lovelier one smiled in reply, not brazenly, not with the red-lipped, painted-cheeked smile of the Anglo-Saxon siren, but demurely, pleasantly, as if she were merely returning his smile out of courtesy and from an abundance of gentle good nature.
“See?” said Bert.
“But they look nice.” Again Kendall used that word.
“They are nice.... This isn’t Terre Haute, son.”
Everybody was drinking wine, Kendall noticed. It was universal, and as the meal progressed he spoke about it.
“Everybody is going to the wine,” he said, “but nobody gets noisy.”
“Nobody does,” said Bert. “Do we get noisy at home when we drink coffee?”
Kendall watched. He saw a man half fill his companion’s glass with red wine, then pour in as much water as there was wine. This, he saw, was almost universally done.... Conversation was animated. There was gay laughter and lightness, but it was not the gaiety of wine.