"I bet they don't," remarked Sally. "You don't talk about things you understand."
"Well, let's talk about what we don't understand...." He was beseeching in his tone, and his soft eyes glowed. The waitress approached, bearing two large plates piled high with spaghetti.
"Golly!" ejaculated Sally. "Howjer eat it? Fingers?"
They had little time to talk while they were engaged with the capers of this surprising food; but when both were tired of playing with the spaghetti they turned their attention to the straw-covered bottle of Chianti which had been brought. Sally made a wry mouth at her first venture. She had yet to learn that the wine was heavier than any she had yet drunk. She strained her ears to catch more of what the fascinatingly conceited young man was saying about his inexhaustible topic. Good-looking boy, if he cut his hair and shaved his moustache off. She saw Gaga look anxiously and wonderingly across at her, with a kind of hunger; and she was shaken by a mischievous notion. She had never done such a thing before, but she put her foot forward so that it touched one of his, and smiled right into Gaga's chocolate eyes. The slow red crept up under his skin, and they had no need to talk. Sally was laughing to herself, and eating some beautifully cooked veal, and she knew that Gaga was glowing with contentment. She at last observed the two talkers slouch out of the restaurant, the man in very baggy-kneed trousers and a loose coat, and the girl in a dress of home make. A quick wrinkle showed in Sally's grimacing nose as she brought her professional eye to bear; and then the two talkers were gone and were forgotten. Sally and Gaga were quite alone at their end of the room, in a corner, favorably remote for intimate conversation from the remaining diners.
"Funny us not knowing what they were talking about," mused Sally. "You don't, you know. It's very hard to know what anybody talks about. To understand it, I mean. Hard to know anybody, too."
"I shouldn't have thought I was hard to know," ventured Gaga.
"I wasn't thinking about you," said Sally, with unconscious cruelty. "I was thinking.... I've forgotten. Isn't this wine sour! No, I'm getting used to it—getting to like it. Hasn't half— I mean, it's got a nice smooth way of going down." As Sally checked herself she realised that she was now so much at ease with Gaga that she no longer worried about her pronunciation or her words when she was with him. Worry? Sally's conceitedness soared into the air and frowned down upon the faltering Gaga with something like scorn. Poor Gaga! thought Sally. Instantly her hardness returned, and she looked at his lined face and the pale lips that hung a little away from his teeth in sign of ill-health. She saw his dark grey morning coat, and the slip inside the waistcoat, and his sober tie. And it seemed to Sally that she saw right into the simple mind of Gaga. He was so simple, like the hire purchase system. He was about the simplest man she had ever seen, for his tongue could hardly utter more than the tamest of words and phrases, and he never seemed to Sally to keep anything back.
"And yet, you know," she went on, following Gaga's remark and this train of thought, "there's lots more to know about people than just what you see—and what they do and say. If you know them ever so well, you only know a bit of them. You don't know me. You think I'm a little girl in the workroom, and a worker, and all that."
"I think you're a marvel!" ejaculated Gaga.
"Yes, well, when you've got to the end of thinking I'm a marvel, what happens? You don't know me any better. I might be a poisoner, or a ... or a...." Sally's invention failed her. "I might keep a shop, or serve a bar, or be an actress," she went on, recovering fertility. "I mean, in the evenings."