t with your
fingers."

"It's the sweetest way of all," said Dillwyn.

"Where did you discover that? It must have been among savages.
Children--country folks--_and_ savages, I ought to have said."

"Orientals are not savages. On the contrary, very far exceeding in
politeness any western nation I know of."

"You would set a table, then, with napkins and fingers! Or are the
napkins not essential?"

"C'est selon," said Dillwyn. "In a strawberry bed, or under a cherry
tree, I should vote them a nuisance. At an Asiatic grandee's table you
would have them embroidered and perfumed; and one for your lap and
another for your lips."

"Evidently they are long past the stage of simplicity. Talking of
napkins we had them embroidered--and exquisitely--Japanese work; at the
De Larges'. Mine had a peacock in one corner; or I don't know if it was
a peacock; it was a gay-feathered bird--"

"A peacock has a tail," suggested Mr. Dillwyn.

"Well, I don't know whether it had a tail, but it was most exquisite;
in blue and red and gold; I never saw anything prettier. And at every
plate were such exquisite gifts! really elegant, you know. Flowers are
all very well; but when it comes to jewellery, I think it is a little
beyond good taste. Everybody can't do it, you know; and it is rather
embarrassing to _nous autres_."

"Simplicity _has_ its advantages," observed Mr. Dillwyn.

"Nonsense, Philip! You are as artificial a man as any one I know."

"In what sense?" asked Mr. Dillwyn calmly. "You are bound to explain,
for the sake of my character, that I do not wear false heels to my
boots."

"Don't be ridiculous! You have no need to wear false heels. _Art_ need
not be _false_, need it?"

"True art never is," said Mr. Dillwyn, amid some laughter.

"Well, artifice, then?"

"Artifice, I am afraid, is of another family, and not allied to truth."

"Well, everybody that knows you knows you are true; but they know, too,
that if ever there was a fastidious man, it is you; and a man that
wants everything at its last pitch of refinement."

"Which desirable stage I should say the luncheon you were describing
had not reached."

"You don't know. I had not told you the half. Fancy!--the ice floated
in our glasses in the form of pond lilies; as pretty as possible, with
broad leaves and buds."

"How did they get it in such shapes?" asked Madge, with her eyes a
trifle wider open than was usual with them.

"O, froze it in moulds, of cou