"Isn't there!" retorted the youth, rising purposefully. "I'm going to
get him and find him a job that's fit for him if I have to take him into
partnership. Of all the dash-blanked-dod-blizzened--"

"Caspar! What are you going to do? Don't. You'll embarrass him
frightfully."

But he was already heading off his prey at the exit. Bobbie saw her
painter's face flame into welcome, then stiffen into dismay. The pair
vanished beyond the watcher's ken. On his return the gilded youth
behaved strangely. From time to time he shook his head. From time to
time he chuckled. And, while Bobbie was talking to her other neighbor,
he shot curious and amused glances at her. He told her nothing. But his
interest in his supper returned. Bobbie's didn't.

To discuss the social aspects of menial service with a practitioner of
it who has been admitted to a certain implicit equality is a difficult
and delicate matter for a girl brought up in Roberta Holland's school.
Several times after the restaurant encounter she essayed it; trying both
the indirect approach and the method of extreme frankness. Neither
answered. Julien responded to her advances by alternate moods of extreme
gloom and slyly inexplicable amusement. Bobbie gave it up, concluding
that he was in a very queer mood, anyway. She was right. He was.

The next episode of their progress took the form of a veritable
unmasking which, perversely enough, only fixed the mask tighter upon
Julien Tenney. By way of loosening up his wrist for the open season,
Peter Quick Banta had taken advantage of an amiable day to sketch out a
composite floral and faunal scheme on the flagging in front of