That's the way to get gradually trained into the wheel."
Aunt Mary thought some of obeying; she fished out one oyster, wiped it
carefully with a bit of bread, regarded it with more than dubious
countenance, and then suddenly decided not to.
"I'd rather be at home when I try experiments," she said, decidedly; and
the waiter carried off her cocktail and gave her food that was good beyond
question thereafter.
The dinner went with zest. It was an enlivening party that consumed it,
and what they consumed with it enlivened them still more. The gentlemen
soon reached the point where they could laugh over jokes they could not
understand, and the one lady member became equally merry over wit that she
did not hear. She forgot for the nonce that there were any phases of life
in which she was not a believer, and whether this was owing to the
surrounding gayety or to the champagne which they persuaded her to taste
it is not my province to explain.
"Now we must lay our lines for events to come," Jack said, when they
advanced upon the dessert and prepared to occupy an extensive territory of
ices, fruit, and jellied something or other. "It would be a sin for Aunt
Mary to leave this famous battlefield without a few honorable scars! We
must take her out in a bubble for one thing and--"
"In mine!" cried Clover. "To-morrow! Why can't she?--I held up my hand
first?"
"All right," said Jack; "to-morrow she's your's. At four o'clock."
"She must have goggles," cried Mitchell.
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