"Are you the same?" say both kinds of eyes, intent, absorbed with the wish
that has been starved small through the last three months, but now grows
again like a smoke-tree out of a magicked jar, "Really the same and really
loving me and really glad to be here?" But they can get no proper sort of
answer now--there are too many other Ellicotts around, especially Mrs.
Ellicott.

Dinner is over with coffee and cigarettes that Mrs. Ellicott has bought for
Oliver because no one shall ever say she failed in the smallest punctilio
of hospitality, though she offers them to him with a gesture like that of a
missionary returning his baked-mud idol to a Bushman too far gone in sin
to reclaim. Mr. Ellicott smoked cigarettes before his marriage. For twenty
years now he has been a contributing member of the Anti-Tobacco League.

And now all that Oliver knows is that unless he can talk to Nancy soon
and alone, he will start being very rude. It is not that he wants to be
rude--especially to Nancy's family--but the impulse to get everyone but
Nancy away by any means from sarcasm to homicidal mania is as reasonless
and strong as the wish to be born. After all he and Nancy have not seen
each other wakingly for three months--and there is still her "grand news"
to tell, the grandness of which has seemed to grow more and more dubious
the longer she looked at Oliver. Now is the time for Mr. and Mrs. Ellicott
to disappear as casually and completely as clouds over the edge of the sky
and first of all, not to mention the fact that they are going. But Mrs.
Ellicott has far too much tact ever to be understanding.

She puts Mr. Ellicott's hat on for him and takes his arm as firmly as if
she were police, and he accepts the grasp with the meekness of an old
offender who is not quite sure what particular crime he is being arrested