When we were through with this the servants removed the debris and brought us hot plates.  Then, with the air of one conferring a real treat on us, the butler bore around a tureen arrangement full of smoking-hot string-beans.  When it came my turn I helped myself —­copiously—­and waited for what was to go with the beans.  A pause ensued—­to my imagination an embarrassed pause.  Seeking a cue I glanced down the table and back again.  There did not appear to be anything to go with the beans.  The butler was standing at ease behind his master’s chair—­ease for a butler, I mean—­and the other guests, it seemed to me, were waiting and watching.  To myself I said: 

“Well, sir, that butler certainly has made a J. Henry Fox Pass of himself this trip!  Here, just when this dinner was getting to be one of the notable successes of the present century, he has to go and derange the whole running schedule by serving the salad when he should have served the beans, and the beans when he should have served the salad.  It’s a sickening situation; but if I can save it I’ll do it.  I’ll be well bred if it takes a leg!”

So, wearing the manner of one who has been accustomed all his life to finishing off his dinner with a mess of string-beans, I used my putting-iron; and from the edge of the fair green I holed out in three.  My last stroke was a dandy, if I do say it myself.  The others were game too—­I could see that.  They were eating beans as though beans were particularly what they had come for.  Out of the tail of my eye I glanced at our hostess, sitting next to me on the left.  She was placid, calm, perfectly easy.  Again addressing myself mentally I said: 

“There’s a thoroughbred for you!  You take a woman who got prosperous suddenly and is still acutely suffering from nervous culture, and if such a shipwreck had occurred at her dinner table she’d be utterly prostrated by now—­she’d be down and out—­and we’d all be standing back to give her air; but when they’re born in the purple it shows in these big emergencies.  Look at this woman now—­not a ripple on the surface—­balmy as a summer evening!  But in about one hour from now, Central European time, I can see her accepting that fool butler’s resignation before he’s had time to offer it!”

After the beans had been cleared off the right-of-way we had the dessert and the cheese and the coffee and the rest of it.  And, as we used to say in the society column down home when the wife of the largest advertiser was entertaining, “at a suitable hour those present dispersed to their homes, one and all voting the affair to have been one of the most enjoyable occasions among like events of the season.”  We all knew our manners—­we had proved that.

Personally I was very proud of myself for having carried the thing off so well but after I had survived a few tables d’hote in France and a few more in Austria and a great many in Italy, where they do not have anything at the hotels except tables d’hote, I did not feel quite so proud.  For at this writing in those parts the slender, sylphlike string-bean is not playing a minor part, as with us.  He has the best spot on the evening bill—­he is a headliner.  So is the cauliflower; so is the Brussels sprout; so is any vegetable whose function among our own people is largely scenic.