upon sixteen hundred dollars!"

The Major was a famous club-man and bon vivant, as Montague learned
later on. "He's an uncle of Mrs. Bobbie Waiting's," said Mrs. Alden,
in his ear. "And incidentally they hate each other like poison."

"That is so that I won't repeat my luckless question again?" asked
Montague, with a smile.

"Oh, they meet," said the other. "You wouldn't be supposed to know
that. Won't you have any Scotch?"

Montague's thoughts were so much taken up with the people at this
repast that he gave little thought to the food. He noticed with
surprise that they had real spring lamb--it being the middle of
November. But he could not know that the six-weeks-old creatures
from which it had come had been raised in cotton-wool and fed on
milk with a spoon--and had cost a dollar and a half a pound. A
little later, however, there was placed before him a delicately
browned sweetbread upon a platter of gold, and then suddenly he
began to pay attention. Mrs. Winnie had a coat of arms; he had
noticed it upon her auto, and again upon the groat bronze gates of
the Snow Palace, and again upon the liveries of her footmen, and yet
again upon the decanter of Scotch. And now--incredible and
appalling--he observed it branded upon the delicately browned
sweetbread!

After that, who would not have watched? There were large dishes of
rare fruits upon the table--fruits which had been packed in cotton
wool and shipped in cold storage from every corner of the earth.