The forward lounge was bright, warm, and cheerful, with the ultra-modern interior fittings and deep, foam-rubber chairs and the moonlit snow and trees outside the long port-holes' slits. Gwyn sat between Smitty and Morrow, holding her cup out for Foster to pour her coffee. Foster poured with a deft flourish. He had his jacket tied around his waist as an apron.
"I've always maintained," he observed with mock seriousness, "that the woman's touch is absolutely essential to the success of any project attempted by man!"
"Quite true," Smitty agreed, going along with the gag. "Though I'm not a lace-curtains man, mind you. Just lace." He grinned wolfishly at Gwyn.
"Being a married man, myself," Foster went on, pouring himself a cup of coffee, "I have so accustomed my tastes to minor discrepancies as practiced by the fairer sex that I'm no longer disturbed by such. Nylon stockings and underthings hanging all over the bathroom, for example. As one gets used to that sort of thing—"
"Hear, hear!" Smitty chanted.
Foster sprawled in a dignified pose in the chair facing them. "As one gets used to it," he continued unmindfully, "it fades to its proper insignificance. Then a man can truly visualize the worth of feminine companionship—the slippers, the evening paper, the scratching of one's back—"
Gwyn was laughing. The tension was going out of her shapely, young body. Her gaze was mirthful, speculative—especially when her glance slid over to Morrow.
"One finds," Foster went on, "that the prime essence of—of—"
He broke off with a violent sneeze.
Morrow finished his coffee, set his cup aside, and rose. "We'd better take off," he said flatly. He turned and faced them.