Lady Violet said there was only one sort of wine she really liked and “fizz” was the name of it. And it was so expensive since the War that she only enjoyed drinking it when paid for by other people. But the Club had rather a reputation for barley water. To prove its bona fides she asked the waitress to bring some.
Mame accepted the first beaker of that mild beverage and found it good. The plovers’ eggs, too, were excellent. Still, a quaint combination, as Lady Violet remarked. Yet could Cinderella have forgotten for one moment the nature of the ice beneath her slippers she would have given herself up to frank enjoyment of the nicest food she had had in years.
A spectre was there all the time. But Elmer P. on a Lodge night could hardly have been more full of quip than Lady Violet. Not only was she witty in herself, she seemed a cause of wit in others. First Family was writ large upon her, yet she was everybody’s friend. She passed the time of day with the majority of her fellow members; she had a gay word or a bit of chaff for even the staidest of them; and in her frank and genial fashion she introduced “my friend Miss Du Rance of Chicago” to a discreetly chosen two or three.
As this delectable meal neared its end Mame was hard set to keep the Cinderella feeling at bay. That forward-looking mind of hers could not help contrasting the blithe evening so rapidly wearing thin, with the endless procession of drab to-morrows which surely lay in wait for her. She loathed the thought of the count-every-dollar existence to which she was doomed to return. If only she had a couple of thousand or so laid up in the bank! For a chance had come to enter the life that had such a powerful knack of making every other seem not worth while.
In the midst of these prickly Cinderella thoughts, she woke with a little start to the fact that her vis-à-vis was gazing at her over the flowers in the centre of the table. That was an odd sort of look Lady Violet sometimes had. Once or twice already Mame had surprised it stealing across her face; and she couldn’t help wondering what it meant.
“You’ll have a cup of coffee, won’t you?”
Mame was glad to have a cup of coffee, yet she was sure the look on the face of the fairy godmother had really nothing to do with that aromatic berry.
A waitress came with the coffee.
“Noir? Or sugar and milk?”
Miss Du Rance took plenty of sugar and plenty of milk. They had lingered over their meal. It had been very jolly; and although Mame had been oppressed throughout by a sense of destiny she had managed to keep up her end. Her free comments on men and women, on habits and customs, on powers and principalities had delighted the hostess. This quick-thinking child from the back of beyond was an Original. And so plucky! And really pretty if she wouldn’t trick herself out in that second-rate style!