"Just wait until you see it. It's pretty bad."
"The house must have been charming," said Miss Porter.
"And that's about all it was," replied her father.
The dinner ended with a salad. This was not an incident but an event. The highest note of civilization is struck when a salad is dressed by a master of the chemistry of gastronomy. The clumsy and unworthy hesitate in the performance of this sacred rite, and are never sure of their proportions; the oil refuses intimacy with the vinegar, and sulks and selfishly creates little yellow isles for itself in the estranging sea of acid. The salt becomes indissoluble and the paprika is irrecoverable flotsam. The clove of garlic, always recalcitrant under clumsy handling, refuses to impart the merest hint of its wild tang, but the visible and tangible world reeks with it. It was a joy to John Saxton to see the deftness with which Evelyn Porter performed her miracle; he did not know much about girls, but he surmised that a girl who composed a salad dressing with such certainty did many things gracefully and well. There were no false starts, no "ohs" of regret and appeal, no questions of quantity. The light struck goldenly on the result as she poured it finally upon the crisply-curling lettuce leaves which showed discreetly over the edge of a deep Doulton bowl. It seemed to him high treason that his host should decline the dressing thus produced by an art which realized the dreams of alchemy, and should pour vinegar from the cruet with his own hand upon the helpless leaves.
Porter demanded cigars before the others had finished, and smoked over his coffee. He was in a hurry to leave, and at the earliest possible moment led the way to the veranda, picking up his hat as he stepped blithely along.
It was warmer outside than in, but Porter pretended that it was pleasanter out of doors, and insisted that there was always a breeze on the hill at night. He ran on in drawling monologue about the weather conditions, and how much cooler it was in Clarkson than at the summer places which people foolishly sought at the expense of home comforts. He made his shy boy report his experiences of the day. In addressing the lad he fell into his quizzical manner, but the boy understood it and yielded to it with the same submission that his father's customers adopted when they sought a loan and knew that Porter must prod them with immaterial questions, and irritate them with petty ironies, before he finally scribbled his initials in the corner of their notes and passed them over to the discount clerk.
Raridan appeared at the step presently. They all rose as he came up, and he said to Saxton as he shook hands with him last: "I see you've found the way to headquarters. All roads lead up to this Alpine height,—and I fear—I fear—that all roads lead down again," he added, with a doleful sigh, and laughed. He drew out his cigarettes and began making himself greatly at home. He assured Mr. Porter, with amiable insolence, that his veranda chairs were the most uncomfortable ones he knew, and went to fetch himself a better seat from the hall.
"Mr. Raridan likes to be comfortable," said Miss Porter in his absence.
"But he finds pleasure in making others comfortable, too," Saxton ventured.