“How simple and unimpressive we are, Basil,” she said, “beside all these people!  I used to feel it in Europe when I was young, and now I’m certain that we must seem like two faded-in old village photographs.  We don’t even look intellectual!  I hope we look good.”

“I know I do,” said March.  The waiter went for their supper, and they joined in guessing the different nationalities in the room.  A French party was easy enough; a Spanish mother and daughter were not difficult, though whether they were not South-American remained uncertain; two elderly maiden ladies were unmistakably of central Massachusetts, and were obviously of a book-club culture that had left no leaf unturned; some Triestines gave themselves away by their Venetian accent; but a large group at a farther table were unassignable in the strange language which they clattered loudly together, with bursts of laughter.  They were a family party of old and young, they were having a good time, with a freedom which she called baronial; the ladies wore white satin, or black lace, but the men were in sack-coats; she chose to attribute them, for no reason but their outlandishness, to Transylvania.  March pretended to prefer a table full of Germans, who were unmistakably bourgeois, and yet of intellectual effect.  He chose as his favorite a middle-aged man of learned aspect, and they both decided to think of him as the Herr Professor, but they did not imagine how perfectly the title fitted him till he drew a long comb from his waistcoat pocket and combed his hair and beard with it above the table.

The wine wrought with the Transylvanians, and they all jargoned together at once, and laughed at the jokes passing among them.  One old gentleman had a peculiar fascination from the infantile innocence of his gums when he threw his head back to laugh, and showed an upper jaw toothless except for two incisors, standing guard over the chasm between.  Suddenly he choked, coughed to relieve himself, hawked, held his napkin up before him, and—­

“Noblesse oblige,” said March, with the tone of irony which he reserved for his wife’s preoccupations with aristocracies of all sorts.  “I think I prefer my Hair Professor, bourgeois, as he is.”

The ladies attributively of central Massachusetts had risen from their table, and were making for the door without having paid for their supper.  The head waiter ran after them; with a real delicacy for their mistake he explained that though in most places the meals were charged in the bill, it was the custom in Carlsbad to pay for them at the table; one could see that he was making their error a pleasant adventure to them which they could laugh over together, and write home about without a pang.

“And I,” said Mrs. March, shamelessly abandoning the party of the aristocracy, “prefer the manners of the lower classes.”

“Oh, yes,” he admitted.  “The only manners we have at home are black ones.  But you mustn’t lose courage.  Perhaps the nobility are not always so baronial.”