The Armenian restaurant is peculiar, for it has foreign food at low prices, and is below Thirtieth Street, yet it has not become Bohemian.  Consequently it has no bad music and no crowd of persons from Missouri whose women risk salvation for an evening by smoking cigarettes.  Here prosperous Oriental merchants, of mild natures and bandit faces, drink semi-liquid Turkish coffee and discuss rugs and revolutions.

In fact, the place seemed so unartificial that Theresa, facing Mr. Wrenn, was bored.  And the menu was foreign without being Society viands.  It suggested rats’ tails and birds’ nests, she was quite sure.  She would gladly have experimented with pate de foie gras or alligator-pears, but what social prestige was there to be gained at the factory by remarking that she “always did like pahklava”?  Mr. Wrenn did not see that she was glancing about discontentedly, for he was delightedly listening to a lanky young man at the next table who was remarking to his vis-a-vis, a pale slithey lady in black, with the lines of a torpedo-boat:  “Try some of the stuffed vine-leaves, child of the angels, and some wheat pilaf and some bourma.  Your wheat pilaf is a comfortable food and cheering to the stomach of man.  Simply won-derful.  As for the bourma, he is a merry beast, a brown rose of pastry with honey cunningly secreted between his petals and—­Here!  Waiter!  Stuffed vine-leaves, wheat p’laf, bourm’—­twice on the order and hustle it.”

“When you get through listening to that man—­he talks like a bar of soap—­tell me what there is on this bill of fare that’s safe to eat,” snorted Theresa.

“I thought he was real funny,” insisted Mr. Wrenn....  “I’m sure you’ll like shish kebab and s—­”

“Shish kibub! Who ever heard of such a thing!  Haven’t they any—­oh, I thought they’d have stuff they call `Turkish Delight’ and things like that.”

“`Turkish Delights’ is cigarettes, I think.”

“Well, I know it isn’t, because I read about it in a story in a magazine.  And they were eating it.  On the terrace....  What is that shish kibub?”

“Kebab....  It’s lamb roasted on skewers.  I know you’ll like it.”

“Well, I’m not going to trust any heathens to cook my meat.  I’ll take some eggs and some of that—­what was it the idiot was talking about—­berma?”

“Bourma....  That’s awful nice.  With honey.  And do try some of the stuffed peppers and rice.”

“All right,” said Theresa, gloomily.

Somehow Mr. Wrenn wasn’t vastly transformed even by the possession of the two thousand dollars her mother had reported.  He was still “funny and sort of scary,” not like the overpowering Southern gentlemen she supposed she remembered.  Also, she was hungry.  She listened with stolid glumness to Mr. Wrenn’s observation that that was “an awful big hat the lady with the funny guy had on.”