reuil's irony was a faint overtone which in no way hindered him from chiming in with Casimir. The difference between Anglo-Saxons and Latins, Grover was thinking, is that your Anglo-Saxon tries to pretend that the fine blossoms of his culture grew without the instrumentality of mud and manure, whereas your Frenchman not only acknowledges the fact but delights in it. Both are right and both are wrong. To be a thorough-going specimen of either, an Emerson or a Verlaine, is splendid; but to be on the fence between the two would be a barren fate.
Casimir himself mixed an interminable dressing for a big bowl of salad. Grover was bursting with the food that had been heaped on him, and there was more to come. It was already after four and friends of Mme. Casimir were due for tea.
"Quelle agréable réunion!" exclaimed Casimir once more.
"There are times," his wife put in, "When he won't speak to a soul, and all but drives people out of the house."
"There are times," her husband complacently added, "when people are insupportable, and what's the use of having a house of your own if you can't drive idiots out of it. Let them go to a madhouse. Rosalie! Un bon café! Mais bon! Pas de la boue cuite à l'eau! And if you wish to rejoin your mother in paradise, no chicory. My good spouse," he confided to Grover, "whose qualities cannot be denied, has a few wrong
