“Fun!” Monty snorted. “Do you remember the classic remark of the frog who was pelted by small mischievous boys? ‘This may be the hell of a joke to you,’ said the frog, ‘but it’s death to me.’”
“I’ve always been sorry for that frog,” Denby commented.
“But, man alive, you are the frog,” Monty cried.
“Oh, no,” Denby returned, making a tie that had no likeness to a vast butterfly.
“Your frog hadn’t a ghost of a chance, and he knew it, while with me it’s an even chance. One oughtn’t to ask any more than that in these hard times.”
He sauntered down the stairs cool and debonair to find Ethel Cartwright still looking listlessly across the green lawns.
“Those gentle chimes,” he said, as the dinner-gong pealed out, “call the faithful to dinner. I wish it were in Paris, don’t you?”
She pulled herself together and tried to smile as she had done before Taylor had dashed all her joy to the ground.
“Aren’t you hungering for string-beans?” he asked, “and the hole in the table-cloth, and the gay old moon? But after all, what do they matter now? You’re here, and I’m hungry.” He offered her his arm. “Aren’t you hungry, too?”