Page:So Big (1924).djvu/341

 “To-night.” He had an important engagement. He cast it out of his life.

“To-night! That’s grand. Where do you want to dine? The Casino?” The smartest club in Chicago; a little pink stucco Italian box of a place on the Lake Shore Drive. He was rather proud of being in a position to take her there as his guest.

“Oh, no, I hate those arty little places. I like dining in a hotel full of all sorts of people. Dining in a club means you’re surrounded by people who're pretty much alike. Their membership in the club means they’re there because they are all interested in golf, or because they’re university graduates, or belong to the same political party or write, or paint, or have incomes of over fifty thousand a year, or something. I like ’em mixed up, higgledy-piggledy. A dining room full of gamblers, and insurance agents, and actors, and merchants, thieves, bootleggers, lawyers, kept ladies, wives, flaps, travelling men, millionaires—everything. That’s what I call dining out. Unless one is dining at a friend’s house, of course.” A rarely long speech for her.

“Perhaps,” eagerly, “you’ll dine at my little apartment some time. Just four or six of us, or even”

“Perhaps.”

“Would you like the Drake to-night?”

“It looks too much like a Roman bath. The pillars scare me. Let’s go to the Blackstone. I'll always be sufficiently from Texas to think the Blackstone French room the last word in elegance.”