You had only to glance through those windows to see that Mrs. Downey’s combined the splendid publicity of an hotel with the refinements of a well-appointed home.  That it offered, together with a luxurious table, the society of youthful persons of both sexes.  And if everything around Mrs. Downey was on a liberal scale, so was Mrs. Downey herself.  She was expansive in her person, prodigal in sympathy, exuberant in dress.  If she had one eye to the main chance, the other smiled at you in pure benignity.  On her round face was a festal flush, flooding and effacing the little care-worn lines and wrinkles which appeared on it by day.  It wore the colour of the hour which, evening after evening, renewed for her the great drama and spectacle of the Dinner.

Her table was disposed with a view to scenic effect.  It was not by accident that Mrs. Downey herself was seated at the obscure or sideboard end, and that she gathered round her there the older and less attractive members of her circle.  This arrangement was flattering to them, for it constituted an order of precedence and they were in the seats of honour.  It had also the further advantage of giving prominence to the young people whose brilliant appearance of an evening was as good as an advertisement for Mrs. Downey’s.

First then, at the top of the table, sat two elderly ladies, dishevelled birds of passage, guests of a day and a night.  Next, on Mrs. Downey’s right, came old Miss Bramble, with old Mr. Partridge opposite on the left.  The young gentleman at the extreme bottom or public end of the table was Mr. Spinks.  He was almost blatantly visible from the street.  At Mr. Spinks’s side sat Miss Ada Bishop, the young lady in the fascinating pink blouse; and opposite him, Miss Flossie Walker, in the still more fascinating blue.  To the left of Miss Bishop in the very centre of the table was a middle-aged commercial gentleman, Mr. Soper (not specially conspicuous); and facing him and on Miss Walker’s right came Miss Roots, who might be any age you please between thirty and forty.  Between them at the present moment, there was an empty chair.

Miss Roots was the link between the melancholy decadence above the aspidistras and the glorious and triumphant youth below.  As far as could be inferred with any certainty she had leanings to the side of youth.  Her presence was no restraint upon its glad and frolicsome humour.  It felt that it could trust her.  She had never been known to betray any of the secrets that passed at the risk of their lives from Miss Bishop’s side of the table to Miss Walker’s.  There was reason to suppose that Miss Roots was aware of the surreptitious manufacture of bread pellets by Mr. Spinks (Mr. Spinks being the spirit of youth incarnate); but when one of these missiles struck Miss Roots full in the throat, when it should have just delicately grazed the top of Miss Flossie’s frizzled hair, Miss Roots not only ignored the incident at the time, but never made the faintest allusion to it afterwards.  Therefore Mr. Spinks voted Miss Roots to be a brick, and a trump, and what he called a real lady.