I’ll say this for him: he didn’t let her gag him. What he wanted all ears for was the story about the advertising agency executive who did a research job on the flea, and by gum he stuck to it. I had heard it told better by Saul Panzer, but he got the point in, with only fair audience response. The three society men laughed with tact, discretion, and refinement. Helen Yarmis let the corners of her mouth come up. The Grantham twins exchanged a glance of sympathy. Faith Usher caught Ethel Varr’s eye across the table, shook her head, just barely moving it, and dropped her eyes. Then Edwin Laidlaw chipped in with a story about an author who wrote a book in invisible ink, and Beverly Kent followed with one about an army general who forgot which side he was on. We were all one big happy family-well, fairly happy-by the time the squabs were served. Then I had a problem. At Wolfe’s table we tackle squabs with our ringers, which is of course the only practical way, but I didn’t want to wreck the party. Then Rose Tuttle got her fork on to hers with one hand, and with the other grabbed a leg and yanked, which settled it.
Miss Tuttle had said something that I wanted to go into, tactfully, but she was talking with Edwin Laidlaw, on her left, and I gave Ethel Varr, on my right, a look. Her face was by no means out of surprises. In profile, close up, it was again different, and when it turned and we were eye to eye, once more it was new.
'I hope,' I said, 'you won’t mind a personal remark.'
'I’ll try not to,' she said. 'I can’t promise until I hear it.'
'I’ll take a chance. In case you have caught me staring at you I want to explain why.'
'I don’t know.' She was smiling. 'Maybe you’d better not. Maybe it would let me down. Maybe I’d rather think you stared just because you wanted to.'
'You can think that too. If I hadn’t wanted to I wouldn’t have stared. But the idea is, I was trying to catch you looking the same twice. If you turn your head only a little one way or the other it’s a different face. I know there are people with faces that do that, but I’ve never seen one that changes as much as yours. Hasn’t anyone ever mentioned it to you?'
She parted her lips, closed them, and turned right away from me. All I could do was turn back to my plate, and I did so, but in a moment she was facing me again. 'You know,' she said, 'I’m only nineteen years old.'
'I was nineteen once,' I assured her. 'Some ways I liked it, and some ways it was terrible.'
'Yes, it is,' she agreed. 'I haven’t learned how to take things yet, but I suppose I will. I was silly-just because you said that. I should have just told you yes, someone did mention that to me once. About my face. More than once.'
So I had put my foot in it. How the hell are you going to be tactful when you don’t know what is out of bounds and what isn’t? Merely having a face that changes isn’t going to get a girl a baby. I flopped around. 'Well,' I said, 'I know it was a personal remark, and I only wanted to explain why I had stared at you. I wouldn’t have brought it up if I had known there was anything touchy about it. I think you ought to get even. I’m touchy about horses because once I caught my foot in the stirrup when I was getting off, so you might try that. Ask me something about horses and my face will change.'
'I suppose you ride in Central Park. Was it in the park?'
'No, it was out West one summer. Go ahead. You’re getting warm.'
We stayed on horses until Paul Schuster, on her right, horned in. I couldn’t blame him, since he had Mrs Robilotti on his other side. But Edwin Laidlaw still had Rose Tuttle, and it wasn’t until the dessert came, cherry pudding topped with whipped cream, that I had a chance to ask her about the remark she had made.
'Something you said,' I told her. 'Maybe I didn’t hear it right.'
She swallowed pudding. 'Maybe I didn’t say it right. I often don’t.' She leaned to me and lowered her voice. 'Is this Mr Laidlaw a friend of yours?'
I shook my head. 'Never saw him before.'
'You haven’t missed anything. He publishes books. To look at me, would you think I was dying to know how many books were published last year in America and England and a lot of other countries?'
'No, I wouldn’t. I would think you could make out all right without it.'
'I always have. What was it I said wrong?'
'I didn’t say you said it wrong. I understood you to say something about the society men that were here the other time, and I wasn’t sure I got it. I didn’t know whether you meant another party like this one.'
She nodded. 'Yes, that’s what I meant. Three years ago. She throws one every year, you know.'
'Yes, I know.'
'This is my second one. This friend of mine I mentioned, she says the only reason I had another baby was to get invited here for some more champagne, but believe me, if I liked champagne so much I could get it a lot quicker and oftener than that, and anyway, I didn’t have the faintest idea I would be invited again. How old do you think I am?'
I studied her. 'Oh-twenty-one.'
She was pleased. 'Of course you took off five years to be polite, so you guessed it exactly. I’m twenty-six. So it isn’t true that having babies makes a girl look older. Of course, if you had a lot of them, eight or ten, but by that time you would be older. I just don’t believe I would look younger if I hadn’t had two babies. Do you?'
I was on a spot. I had accepted the invitation with my eyes and ears open. I had told my hostess that I was acquainted with the nature and significance of the affair and she could count on me. I had on my shoulders the responsibility of the moral and social position of the community, some of it anyhow, and here this cheerful unmarried mother was resting the whole problem on the single question, had it aged her any? If I merely said no,
