If we could only allow one another to talk uninterruptedly all the time,
the dinner would be the greatest success in the world, and we should come
home full of the highest mutual respect. But I suspect we can't manage
that--even your infallible Fulkerson couldn't work it--and I'm afraid
that there'll be some listening that 'll spoil the pleasure of the time."
March was so well pleased with this view of the case that he suggested
the idea involved to Fulkerson. Fulkerson was too good a fellow not to
laugh at another man's joke, but he laughed a little ruefully, and he
seemed worn with more than one kind of care in the interval that passed
between the present time and the night of the dinner.
Dryfoos necessarily depended upon him for advice concerning the scope and
nature of the dinner, but he received the advice suspiciously, and
contested points of obvious propriety with pertinacious stupidity.
Fulkerson said that when it came to the point he would rather have had
the thing, as he called it, at Delmonico's or some other restaurant; but
when he found that Dryfoos's pride was bound up in having it at his own
house, he gave way to him. Dryfoos also wanted his woman-cook to prepare
the dinner, but Fulkerson persuaded him that this would not do; he must
have it from a caterer.
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