The Veneering dinners are excellent dinners⁠—or new people wouldn’t come⁠—and all goes well. Notably, Lady Tippins has made a series of experiments on her digestive functions, so extremely complicated and daring, that if they could be published with their results it might benefit the human race. Having taken in provisions from all parts of the world, this hardy old cruiser has last touched at the North Pole, when, as the ice-plates are being removed, the following words fall from her:

“I assure you, my dear Veneering⁠—”

(Poor Twemlow’s hand approaches his forehead, for it would seem now, that Lady Tippins is going to be the oldest friend.)

“I assure you, my dear Veneering, that it is the oddest affair! Like the advertising people, I don’t ask you to trust me, without offering a respectable reference. Mortimer there, is my reference, and knows all about it.”