“Probably you’re right mother, but they’re smart, good looking girls, even if one of them is my daughter, and heavens knows we could use some really smart, level-headed girls in one of my companies.”
Janet’s father wheeled the car in to the curb in front of the restaurant where they were to have dinner and in the bustle of getting out of the car conversation switched to another topic, but Henry Thorne’s words persisted in sticking in Janet’s mind.
Henry Thorne had planned and ordered the supper himself. It was a man’s meal and Janet and Helen, now tremendously hungry after the strain of the play, enjoyed it to the utmost.
First there was chilled tomato juice and in the center of the table a heaping platter of celery, olives and pickled onions that they ate with relish through all of the courses of the dinner.
Then came great sizzling steaks, thick and almost swimming in their own juice, french fried potatoes, a liberal head lettuce salad, small buttered peas, hot rolls and jam. And after that there was open-face cherry pie and coffee for those who cared for it.
“So this is your idea of a meal, Henry?” asked his wife, surveying the welter of dishes on the table.
“Well, perhaps not every day and every meal, but once in a while I’d say yes. This is my idea of a meal.”
“I think it’s been grand,” spoke up Janet’s mother, “especially since I didn’t have to do any work toward it.”
“That does make a difference,” conceded Mrs. Thorne, “but I’d hate to think of Henry’s waistline if he had a meal like this every day.”
Conversation turned to neighborhood issues and talk of the town, for Henry Thorne maintained a tremendously active interest in the affairs of his home city.