Once, at a dinner, fate and her hostess allotted a different kind of companion, a grim looking person with very broad shoulders and very clear blue eyes, who let her severely alone during three courses and then when she was getting desperately bored by the over-assiduous attentions of the receding-chinned, narrow-browed scion of wealth who sat at her other elbow had suddenly turned to explode a question in her direction.
"What the devil do you see in all this?"
Sylvia had retorted that she didn't know what she saw but was trying to find out.
"When the pumpkin coach arrives I shall skip back home and think it over," she had added whimsically with a Sylvia smile.
Her neighbor had grunted a little at that and eyed her sharply from under his heavy brows.
"I thought as much," he said. "You don't belong."
"Don't I?" Sylvia had inquired dubiously. "Isn't my gown all right?" She was wearing a New York creation this time, of white tulle and gold tissue, a frock which Jeanette had pronounced a "dream," so her anxiety was not very deep-seated. "Or is it my hair? Ears are out just now, aren't they. They told me they were."
"Oh, you are protectively colored all right. It isn't that. Superficially you might be any one of this sea of ninnies that surround us. But, my dear young lady, your eyes betray you. You have a brain."
"Dear me!" sighed Sylvia, looking around her apprehensively. "Is it so bad as that? I hope nobody else suspects."
"No danger. They aren't looking for brains. Bodies content 'em. I hope you don't think this Punch and Judy show is the real New York? You are a stranger, I take it?"