down to vassals and retainers--superintendents, cashiers, heads of
departments, and the like--at the foot, where the Thane's lady took
her place as a consolation for the less important. Here, too, among
the thralls and bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a meek Banquo, wondering
how anybody could look at him and eat.

Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were
wholesome folk who understood that dinner meant something intended
for introduction into the system by means of an aperture in the face,
devised by nature for that express purpose. And besides, nobody
looked at Bibbs.

He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong
enough to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting
effort, and the talk that went on about him was too fast and too
fragmentary for his drawl to keep pace with it. So he felt relieved
when each of his neighbors in turn, after a polite inquiry about his
health, turned to seek livelier responses in other directions. For the
talk went on with the eating, incessantly. It rose over the throbbing
of the orchestra and the clatter and clinking of silver and china and
glass, and there was a mighty babble.

"Yes, sir! Started without a dollar." ... "Yellow flounces on the
overskirt--" ... "I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger
this year,' I says." ... "Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one
weeks." ... "One of the biggest men in the biggest--" ... "The wife
says she'll have to let out my pants if my appetite--" ... "Say, did
you see that statue of a Turk in the hall? One of the finest things
I ever--" ... "Not a dollar, not a nickel, not one red cent do you
get out o' me,' I says, and so he ups and--" ... "Yes, the baby makes