The table was meagre and awful and pruneful; but she ate with an appetite that amazed Rita, whose sophisticated palate was grossly insulted thrice daily.
"How on earth you can contrive to eat that hash," she said, resentfully, "I don't understand. When my Maillard's give out I'll quietly starve in a daisy field somewhere."
"Close your eyes and pretend you and Sam are dining at the Knickerbocker," suggested Valerie, cheerfully. "That's what I do when the food doesn't appeal to me."
"With whom do you pretend you are dining?"
"Sometimes with Louis Neville, sometimes with Querida," she, said, frankly. "It helps the hash wonderfully. Try it, dear. Close your eyes and visualise some agreeable man, and the food isn't so very awful."
Rita laughed: "I'm not as fond of men as that."
"Aren't you? I am. I do like an agreeable man, and I don't mind saying so."
"I've observed that," said Rita, still laughing.
"Of course you have. I've spent too many years without them not to enjoy them now—bless their funny hearts!"
"I'm glad there are no men here," observed Rita.