The captive wasn’t so much to look at.  He was kind of neat, dressed in one of the nobby suits that look like ninety dollars in the picture and cost eighteen; he had one of these smooth ironed faces that made him look thirty or forty years old, like all New York men, and he had the conventional glue on his hair.  He was limping noticeably where Ben had run across him, and I could see he was highly suspicious of the whole gang of us, including the man who had treated him like he was a cockroach.  But Ben had been persuasive and imperious—­took him off his feet, like you might say—­so he shook hands all around and ventured to set down with us.  He had the same cold, slippery cautious hand that every New York man gives you the first time so I says to myself he’s a real one all right and we fell to the new round of stingers Jake had motioned for, and to the nouveaux art-work food that now came along.

Naturally Ben and the New Yorker done most of the talking at first; about how the good old town had changed; how they was just putting up the Cable Building at Houston Street when Ben left in ’92, and wasn’t the old Everett House a good place for lunch, and did the other one remember Barnum’s Museum at Broadway and Ann, and Niblo’s Garden was still there when Ben was, and a lot of fascinating memories like that.  The New Yorker didn’t relax much at first and got distinctly nervous when he saw the costly food and heard Ben order vintage champagne which he always picks out by the price on the wine list.  I could see him plain as day wondering just what kind of crooks we could be, what our game was and how soon we’d spring it on him—­or would we mebbe stick him for the dinner check?  He didn’t have a bit good time at first, so us four others kind of left Ben to fawn upon him and enjoyed ourselves in our own way.

It was all quite elevating or vicious, what with the orchestra and the singers and the dancing and the waiters with vitality still unimpaired.  And New York has improved a lot, I’ll say that.  The time I was there before they wouldn’t let a lady smoke except in the very lowest table d’hotes of the underworld at sixty cents with wine.  And now the only one in the whole room that didn’t light a cigarette from time to time was a nervous dame in a high-necked black silk and a hat that was never made farther east than Altoona, that looked like she might be taking notes for a club paper on the attractions or iniquities of a great metropolis.  Jeff Tuttle was fascinated by the dancing; he called it the “tangle” and some of it did look like that.  And he claimed to be shocked by the flagrant way women opened up little silver boxes and applied the paints, oils, and putty in full view of the audience.  He said he’d just as lief see a woman take out a manicure set and do her nails in public, and I assured him he probably would see it if he come down again next year, the way things was going—­him talking that way that had had his white tie done in the open lobby; but men are such.  Jake Berger just looked around kindly and didn’t open his head till near the end of the meal.  I thought he wasn’t noticing anything at all till the orchestra put on a shadow number with dim purple lights.