Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/94

THE IVORY TOWER rooted in both supports of life. This gave her of course her opportunity of remarking that she had indeed made for the assimilation of "his" cookery—whichever of the varieties his had most been—scarce less an effort than she must confess now to making for that of his terms of utterance; where she had at once again the triumph that he was nowhere, by his own reasoning, if he pretended to an affinity with the nice things they were now eating and yet stood off from the other ground. "Oh I understand you, which appears to be so much more than you do me!" he laughed; "but am I really committed to everything because I'm committed, in the degree you see me, oh yes, to waffles and maple syrup, followed, and on such a scale, by melons and ice-cream? You see in the one case I have but to take in, and in the other have to give out: so can't I have, in a quiet way the American palate without emitting the American sounds?" Thus was he on the straightest flattest level with Miss Mumby—it stretched, to his imagination, without a break, a rise or a fall, à perte de vue; and thus was it already attested that the Miss Mumbys (for it was evident there would be thousands of them) were in society, or were, at any rate, not out of it, society thereby becoming clearly colossal. What was it, moreover, but the best society—as who should say anywhere—when his companion made the bright point that if anything had to do with sounds the palate did? 80