tle
stage with a heavenly seriousness, all of them. You expect somebody to
produce a set of flamingos at any moment and start a game of croquet
among the tiny tables.

Not all of the Greenwich restaurants have definite individual
characters to maintain consistently. Sometimes it is just a general
spirit of picturesqueness, of adventure, that they are trying to keep
up. The "Mouse Trap," except for the trap hanging outside and a mouse
scrawled in chalk on the wall of the entry, carries out no particular
suggestion either of traps or mice. But take a look at the
proprietress (Rita they call her), with her gorgeous Titian hair and
delft-blue apron; at her son Sidney, fair, limp, slim, English-voiced,
with a deft way of pouring after-dinner coffee, and hair the colour of
corn. They are obviously play-acting and enjoying it.

Ask Rita her nationality. She will fix you with eyes utterly devoid of
a twinkle and answer: "I? I am part Scotch terrier, and part Spanish
mongrel, but _mostly_ mermaid!"

Rita goes to the sideboard to cut someone a slice of good-looking pie.
She overhears a reference to the "Candlestick," a little eating place
chiefly remarkable for its vegetables and poetesses.

"If they eat nothing but vegetables no wonder they take to poetry," is
her comment. But still she does not smile. If you giggle, as every
child knows, you spoil the game. They laugh heartily enough and often
enough down in the Village, but they never laugh at the Village
itself,--not because they take it so reverentially, but because they
know how to make believe altogether too well.

Let me whisper here that the most fascinating hour in the "Mouse Trap" is
in the late afternoon, when no one is there, and the ebony hand-maiden in
the big back kitchen is taking the fat, delicious-smelling cakes from the
oven. Drop in some afternoon and sniff the fragrance that suggests your
childhood and "sponge-cake day." You will feel that it is a trap no sane
mouse would ever think of leaving! On a table beside you is a slate with,
obviously, the day's specials:

"Spice cakes.
Chocolate cake.
Strawberry tarts with whipped cream."

And still as you peep through the door at the back you see more and
still more goodies coming hot and fresh and enticing from the oven.
White cakes, golden cakes, delicately browned pies,--if you are
dieting by any chance you flee temptation and leave the "Mouse Trap"
behind you.

It would be impossible to