The room was just large enough to afford comfortable space for a table for four persons, with a small sideboard to serve from. It was really rather pretty. Subdued purple hangings at the door and windows and a frieze of small peacocks above the plate rail indicated its affiliation, so to speak, with the Peacock Cabaret. There were attractive French prints in garland frames on the walls. The table was charmingly laid, with a bowl of yellow roses in the center, and the ices were already served. On the sideboard the coffee in a silver pot was bubbling over an alcohol flame, and there was a long bottle which Merriam correctly interpreted as the container of his choice among liqueurs.
"This is much cosier, isn't it?" said Alicia.
She took the head of the table.
"Father Murray shall sit opposite me," she said, "to see that I behave. You, Mr. Merriman, shall sit on my right, as the guest of honour. That leaves this place for you, Philip. Reformers must be content with what they can get."
Merriam mustered the gallantry to hold Alicia's chair for her, and was warmed by the approving smile with which she thanked him. He had not especially liked Alicia at first, but she grew upon him.
They consumed ices, and Alicia conversed, in the sprightly fashion she affected, with Merriam. The other two men hardly participated at all.
In the course of that conversation Alicia artlessly, tactfully, but efficiently pumped Merriam. By the time Simpson was pouring the sweet-scented wine into thimble-like glasses she--and her companions--were in possession of all the substantial facts of his brief biography and had guessed the secret of his heart. They knew of his boyhood on the farm, of his father's death, and his mother's a few years later, of his college days, with something of their athletic, dramatic, and fraternity incidents, of his teaching at Riceville, of the Riceville football and basket-ball teams, of the occasion for this trip to Chicago--and of Mollie June.
At length the sherbet glasses were removed and some of the coffees, including Merriam's, refilled, and they all lit cigarettes. Merriam was pleasantly startled when Alicia too took a cigarette. He had read, of course, of women smoking, but he had never seen it, or expected to see it with his own eyes, except on the stage. It was more shocking to his secret soul than any amount of bosom and back.
"You need not wait, Simpson," said Alicia. "We'll ring if we need you again."
When the waiter had withdrawn Philip Rockwell took the center of the stage. He tilted back in his chair and abruptly began to talk. Part of the time he looked straight ahead of him as if addressing an audience, but now and again he turned his head and aimed his discourse straight at Merriam. He made only a pretence of smoking.