Even as the sun triumphs over the darkness of night and the gloom of the
tempest, so did Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith's dinner-party emerge radiantly
from the sombre perils which had beset it. It was a brilliant,
unqualified success.
Miss Winthrop was good enough to say, when the evening was ended--saying
it in that assured, unconscious way that gives to the utterances of
Boston people so peculiar a charm--"Really, Mrs. Smith, you have given
me not only a delightful dinner, but a delightful surprise; I would not
have believed, had I not seen it myself, that outside of Boston so many
clever people could be brought together!"
And Mr. Hutchinson Port, upsetting all his traditions, had kept up a
running fire of laudatory comment upon the dinner that had filled
Mrs. Smith's soul with joy. She had expected him, being cut off by her
presence from engaging in his accustomed grumbling, to maintain a moody
silence. She had not expected praise: and she valued his praise the more
because she knew that he spoke out of the fulness of his wisdom; and
because in a matter of such vital moment as eating she knew that she
could trust him to be sincere. His only approach to invidious comment
was in regard to the terrapin.
With the grave solemnity that marks the serving of this delicacy in
Philadelphia; in the midst of a holy calm befitting a sacred rite, the
silver vessels were carried around the board, and in hushed rapture (a
little puzzling to the Bostonians) the precious mixture was ladled out
upon the fourteen plates; and Mr. Hutchinson Port, as the result of
many years of soulful practice, was able to secure to himself at one
dexterous scoop more eggs than fell to the lot of any other two men.
It was while rapturously eating these eggs that he spake: "My dear Mrs.
Smith, will you forgive me if I venture to suggest, even to you--for
what I have seen this night has convinced me that you are one of the
very few people who know what a dinner ought to be--that the Madeira
used in dressing terrapin cannot possibly be _too_ old?"