So Lucinda schooled herself to suffer in silence when she saw men of alleged gentle breeding offer women their left arms to escort them from the drawing to the dining rooms of Fifth avenue or when two bickered in public as to which should escort to her home a woman married to a third, and when Nolan posed a pair of lawless lovers in the foyer of a restaurant and instructed them to register unutterable emotion by holding hands, in the view of hundreds, and swelling their tormented bosoms until (as Fanny described it) they resembled more than anything else a brace of pouter pigeons shaking the shimmy.
She held her peace even when Nolan directed a father and his son, both presumptive adepts in the social life of New York, to pause on meeting, when each was decently turned out in morning-coat and top hat, strike attitudes of awed admiration, solemnly wheel each other round by the shoulders and, wagging dumbfoundered heads over the sight of so much sartorial splendour, exclaim—in subtitles to be inserted in the film—"Some boy!" "Some Dad!"
And when a woman in a scene with Lucinda parted from her, uttering an injunction put in her mouth by Nolan, "Don't forget, dearie—tea at the Ritz at one o'clock," Lucinda, conceiving this to be a slip of the tongue, said nothing. But when later she viewed in the projection-room that sequence of scenes roughly assembled, with what are termed "scratch titles," in place, and read the words as quoted, and on making enquiry learned that they had been copied verbatim from Mr. Nolan's continuity, she ventured to remonstrate.
"But, Mr. Nolan, tea is a function for four o'clock or later all the world over."
"That's so, Miss Lee? Well, what d'you know about that? Guess I must've been thinking about luncheon."
"But your subtitle introducing the restaurant sequence later on says 'Tea at the Ritz.'"
"That's right. I remember now, I meant tea, not luncheon. It's that way in the book."
"But in the restaurant scenes the tables are covered with cloths and the waiters are serving all sorts of dishes, course meals."
"What's the matter with that?"
"Why, nothing is served for tea but tea itself and toast and perhaps little pastries."