"But the women!" said Sally. "There we sat waving to them, and not so much as a look for our pains. My arm is all numb from waving hospitably."
"Never mind," I said. "I'll—I'll—ask your maid to rub it for you. And then we'll send the motor-boat for the very latest edition of the papers, and we'll have Blenheim and Windermere fold them like ships and cocked hats, the way they do the napkins, and put them at each person's place at dinner. That will be the tactful way of showing them what we think about it."
Sally, naturally enough, was delighted at this idea, and forgot all about her poor, numb arm. But the scheme sounded better than it worked. Because when we went in to dinner the guests, instead of being put to shame by the sight of the newspapers, actually sputtered with pleasure, and fell on them and unfolded them and opened them at the financial pages. And then the men began to shout, and argue, and perspire, and fling quotations about the table, and the women got very shrill, and said they didn't know what they would do if the wretched market kept up, or rather if it didn't keep up. And nobody admired the new furniture or the pictures, or the old Fiffield plate, or Sally's gown, or said anything pleasant and agreeable.
"Sam," said Tony Marshall to me, "I'm glad that you can empty your new swimming-pool in three-quarters of an hour, but if you don't watch out you may be so poor before the winter's over that you won't be able to buy water enough to fill it."
"If you're not careful," I said, "I'll fill it with champagne and make you people swim in it till you're more sprightly and agreeable. I never saw such a lot of oafs. I—"
"I tell you, Sam," bellowed Billoo, "that the financial status of this country, owing to that infernal lunatic in the White House—"
"If you must tell me again—" I began.
"Oh," he said disgustedly, "you can't be serious about anything. You're so da—a—ah—urn—rich that you never give a thought to the suffering of the consumer."
"Don't I?" said I. "Did you happen to see me the morning after the Clarion's ball last winter?—I thought about the consumer then, I can tell you."
Billoo turned his back on me very rudely. I looked across the table to Sally. She smiled feebly. She had drawn back her chair so that Tombs and Randall could fight it out across her plate without hitting her in the nose. They were frantically shaking their fists at each other, and they kept saying very loud, and both at once: