"And paper sleeve-shields, too?" he inquired earnestly. "Held by big rubber bands?"
"Paper sleeve-shields held by big rubber bands," I said, "I loathe even more than black sateen aprons."
"Well," he said, "do you know, there was one young woman once—" and he went back to his task obliviously.
At one o'clock I found a little tea-shop in the neighborhood, where food was scandalously high, after the manner of unassimilated tea-shops. I remember the clean little room, with a rose on my table and shelves of jelly over my head.
"How much better that is than some books," I said to the pink waitress, because I had to speak to somebody, so that I could smile. The world is not yet adjusted with that simplicity which permits one to sit in public places alone and, very happily, to smile. And this, I realized, was what I had been doing.
I was obliged to walk twice the transverse length of the blocks cut by the little studio street, before it was time to go back. As I was returning the second time, I came face to face with Mr. Ember carrying a paper sack.
"Torchido," he explained, "lectures in a young ladies' seminary just at noon. It is not convenient for me. But I mind nothing so much as the fact that he will not let me have dried herrings. They—they offend Torchido. They do not offend me. So I go out and buy herrings of my own and hide them in the bookcase. But he nearly always smells them out."
I wanted to say: "You can't buy anywhere such good ones as we used to have in Katytown." Instead, I said something in disparagement of Torchido's taste, and reflected on the immeasurable power of dried herrings in one human being's appeal to another.