"I couldn't, dear. She is so imbecile that she would never get another situation. Ah, there's Hugh! Hugh, did poor Algie Balearic-isles beat you?"
A very large young man had just appeared in the doorway. He held in his hand a sandwich out of which he had just taken an enormous semi-circular bite. The rest of it was in his mouth, and he spoke with the mumbling utterance necessary to those who converse when their mouths are quite full.
"Oh, is that where he comes from?" he asked.
"No, my dear, that is where he went to; then of course since he is here he did come from them in a sense. Dear me, if he had been bishop there about fifty years earlier, he might have copied Chopin. How thrilling!"
"Yes, the Isles won," said Hugh, his voice clearing as he swallowed. "Oh, Aunt Dodo"—this again was a relationship founded only on affection—"he said your price was beyond rubies. So I said 'What price rubies?' and as he didn't understand nor did I, we parted. What a lot of people there seems to be here! I came to talk to Nadine. Oh, there she is. Or would it be better taste if I didn't? Perhaps it would. I shall go to bed instead."
"Then what you call taste is what I call peevishness," said Nadine succinctly.
"I don't understand. What is better peevishness, then?"
"You take me at the foot of the letter," said she. "You see what I mean."
"Yes. I see that you mean 'literally.' But in any case there are too many people, chiefly upside down from where I am. That's Esther, isn't it, and Berts? Tommy is the right way up. Nadine upside down also."
Esther got up.