"Let 'em. Fancy if you'd arrived here with that lovely frock all crumpled--two in a cab! People would have wondered what you had been doing."
"Rodney, if you will talk like that I shall crush your favourite corn."
"Crush it!"
"Please pass me the salt."
Whether, while he passed her the salt, she did crush it, there was nothing to show.
The feast passed off better than, at one time, it had promised to do. There were about twenty people present. Mr. Austin had whipped up, at a moment's notice, various relations, and also certain persons who were intimately connected with the firm of which he was head; he desired to introduce to them not only his future son-in-law, but also the probable partner in his business. Most of these people were very willing to be entertained, simple souls, easily pleased, and the dinner was a good one. Even Tom, who found himself next to a girl with mischievous eyes and a saucy tongue, was inclined to shed some of his melancholy before the menu was half-way through.
"I never did meet a girl who says such things as you do," he told her, with a frankness which was perhaps meant for laudation. "You are quite too altogether."
"You see," she said, with her eyes fixed demurely on her plate, "it doesn't matter what one does say to some people, does it?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Of course some people don't count, do they?"