"Now, Jimmie dear," his wife put in, "you'll only have indigestion if you get excited while you're eatin'."
"I shall have indigestion anyway," growled her husband. "My liver will be like dough to-morrow after this burgundy. I ought to drink a light moselle."
"Well, you can have moselle," John began.
"I loathe moselle. I'd as soon drink syrup of squills," James bellowed.
"All right, you shall have syrup of squills next time."
"Oh, Johnnie," Beatrice interposed with a wide reproachful smile. "Jimmie's only joking. He doesn't really like syrup of squills."
"For heaven's sake, don't try to analyze my tastes," said James to his wife.
John threw a glance at Miss Hamilton, which was meant to express "What did I tell you?" But she was blind to his signal and only intent upon attacking James on behalf of her sex.
"Women have not the same kind of intelligence as men," she began, "because it is denied to them by their physical constitution. But they have, I insist, a supplementary intelligence without which the great masculine minds would be as ineffective as convulsions of nature. Women work like the coral polyps...."
"Bravo!" John cried. "A capital comparison!"