"I want the private room," he said, and Joe nodded eagerly as he saw Drennen's hand emerge from his pocket. "And I want the best dinner for two you can put on. Trimmings and all."
Joe, slipping the first of Drennen's money into his pocket and cherishing high hopes of more, set himself and his boy to work, seeing his way of arriving at the second gold piece with no great loss of time.
The long northern twilight was an hour old when Drennen called for Ygerne. She came out of her room at Marquette's ready for him. She had told him she must "dress" for the occasion. He had thought her joking. In spite of him he stared at her wonderingly a moment. And, despite her own gathering of will, a flush crept into her cheeks under his look while her own eyes widened to the alterations a little effort had made in the man. And the thing each noted swiftly of the other was scarcely less swiftly noted by all men and women in the Settlement before they had gone down to Joe's: he had suddenly become as handsome as a devil from hell; she as radiant as an angel.
"Are we just going to step into a ballroom for the masquerade?" she half whispered with a queer little intake of breath as she found his arm with a white gloved hand. "And is all this," waving at the Settlement itself, the river snaking its way through the narrow valley, the frowning fronts of Ironhead and Indian Peak against the saffron sky, "just so much painted canvas for the proper background?"
He laughed and brought his eyes away from the white throat and shoulders, letting them sweep upward to the mystery of her eyes, the dusky hair half seen, half guessed under the sheen of her scarf, wondering the while at the strange femininity of her in bringing such dainty articles of dress to such a land. Then, his eyes finding the prettily slippered and stockinged feet, he moved with her to the side of the road where the ground was harder.
Joe had seen with amazing rapidity that the "trimmings" were not wanting. With old knowledge born of many years of restaurant work, he knew that any day some prospector might find that which all prospectors endlessly sought and that then he would grind his bare grubstake contemptuously under his heel and demand to eat. Upon such occasions there would be no questions asked as to price if Joe but tickled the tingling palate. Joe had unlocked the padlock of the cellar trapdoor; he had gone down and had unlocked another padlock upon a great box. And all that which he had brought out, beginning with a white tablecloth and ending with nuts and raisins, had been a revelation to his boy assistant. There was potted chicken, there were tinned tomatoes and peaches, there were many things which David Drennen had not looked upon for the matter of years.
The "private room" into which Joe, even his apron changed for the occasion, showed them was simply the far end of the long lunch room, half shut off from the rest of the house by a flimsy partition having no door, but a wide, high arch let into it through which a man at the lunch counter might see the little table and both of the diners.
Drennen, stepping in front of Joe, took Ygerne's scarf, drew out her chair for her, and having seen her seated, took his own place with the table between them. He nodded approvingly as he noted that Joe had not been without taste; for the restaurant keeper had even thought of flowers and the best that the Settlement could provide, a flaming red snowplant, stood in the centre of the table in a glass bowl of clean white snow.
Joe brought the wine, a bucket at which the boy had scrubbed for ten minutes, holding the bottle as the glass bowl held the snow-plant, in a bed of snow. When he offered it a trifle uncertainly to Drennen's gaze and Drennen looked at it and away, nodding carelessly, Joe allowed himself to smile contentedly. Champagne here was like so much molten gold; it was assured that Drennen was "going the limit."
Drennen lifted his glass. His glance, busied a moment reminiscently with the bubbling amber fluid, travelled across the table. Ygerne Bellaire had raised her glass with him. Her eyes were sparkling, a little eager, a little excited, perhaps a little triumphant.