“Oh, I guess you can fix us all right, if you want to, Eddie.”

“Mr. Ditmar’s a great josher,” Mr. Hale told Janet confidentially as he escorted them into the dining-room.  And Ditmar, gazing around over the heads of the diners, spied in an alcove by a window a little table with tilted chairs.

“That one’ll do,” he said.

“I’m sorry, but it’s engaged,” apologized Mr. Hale.

“Forget it, Eddie—­tell ’em they’re late,” said Ditmar, making his way toward it.

The proprietor pulled out Janet’s chair.

“Say,” he remarked, “it’s no wonder you get along in business.”

“Well, this is cosy, isn’t it?” said Ditmar to Janet when they were alone.  He handed her the menu, and snapped his fingers for a waitress.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming to this place?” she asked.

“I wanted to surprise you.  Don’t you like it?”

“Yes,” she replied.  “Only—­”

“Only, what?”

“I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that—­here.”

“All right.  I’ll try to be good until we get into the car again.  You watch me!  I’ll behave as if we’d been married ten years.”

He snapped his fingers again, and the waitress hurried up to take their orders.

“Kingsbury’s still dry, I guess,” he said to the girl, who smiled sympathetically, somewhat ruefully.  When she had gone he began to talk to Janet about the folly, in general, of prohibition, the fuse oil distributed on the sly.  “I’ll bet I could go out and find half a dozen rum shops within a mile of here!” he declared.

Janet did not doubt it.  Ditmar’s aplomb, his faculty of getting what he wanted, had amused and distracted her.  She was growing calmer, able to scrutinize, at first covertly and then more boldly the people at the other tables, only to discover that she and Ditmar were not the objects of the universal curiosity she had feared.  Once in a while, indeed, she encountered and then avoided the glance of some man, felt the admiration in it, was thrilled a little, and her sense of exhilaration returned as she regained her poise.  She must be nice looking—­more than that—­in her new suit.  On entering the tavern she had taken off the tweed coat, which Ditmar had carried and laid on a chair.  This new and amazing adventure began to go to her head like wine....

When luncheon was over they sat in a sunny corner of the porch while Ditmar smoked his cigar.  His digestion was good, his spirits high, his love-making—­on account of the public nature of the place—­surreptitious yet fervent.  The glamour to which Janet had yielded herself was on occasions slightly troubled by some new and enigmatic element to be detected in his voice and glances suggestive of intentions vaguely disquieting.  At last she said: 

“Oughtn’t we to be going home?”

“Home!” he ridiculed the notion.  “I’m going to take you to the prettiest road you ever saw—­around by French’s Lower Falls.  I only wish it was summer.”