"Oh," Eve surveyed him scornfully, "oh, men and their appetites!"
But she had a thousand things to tell him, and her light chatter carried him away from somber thoughts, so that when they reached at last the quaint hostelry toward which their trip had tended, he was ready to meet Eve's mood half-way, and enter with some zest upon their gay adventure. She chose a little table on a side porch, where they were screened from observation, and which overlooked the river, and there took off her hat and powdered her nose, and gave her attention to the selection of the dinner.
"A clear soup, Dicky Boy, and Maryland chicken, hot asparagus, a Russian dressing for our lettuce, and at the end red raspberries with little cakes. They are sponge cakes, Dicky, filled with cream, and they are food for the gods."
He was hungry and tired and he wanted to eat. He was glad when the food came on.
When he finished he leaned back and talked shop. "If you don't like it," he told Eve, "I'll stop. Some women hate it."
"I love it," Eve said. "Dicky, when I dream of your future you are always at the top of things, with smaller men running after you and taking your orders."
He smiled. "Don't dream. It doesn't pay. I've stopped."
She glanced at him. His face was stern.
"What's up, Dicky Boy?"
He laughed without mirth. "Oh, I'm beginning to think we are puppets pulled by strings; that things happen as Fate wills and not as we want them."