With them were six wives, more or less—­it was hard to tell, so early in the evening, as at first glance they all looked alike, and as they all said, “Oh, isn’t this nice!” in the same tone of determined liveliness.  To the eye, the men were less similar:  Littlefield, a hedge-scholar, tall and horse-faced; Chum Frink, a trifle of a man with soft and mouse-like hair, advertising his profession as poet by a silk cord on his eye-glasses; Vergil Gunch, broad, with coarse black hair en brosse; Eddie Swanson, a bald and bouncing young man who showed his taste for elegance by an evening waistcoat of figured black silk with glass buttons; Orville Jones, a steady-looking, stubby, not very memorable person, with a hemp-colored toothbrush mustache.  Yet they were all so well fed and clean, they all shouted “‘Evenin’, Georgie!” with such robustness, that they seemed to be cousins, and the strange thing is that the longer one knew the women, the less alike they seemed; while the longer one knew the men, the more alike their bold patterns appeared.

The drinking of the cocktails was as canonical a rite as the mixing.  The company waited, uneasily, hopefully, agreeing in a strained manner that the weather had been rather warm and slightly cold, but still Babbitt said nothing about drinks.  They became despondent.  But when the late couple (the Swansons) had arrived, Babbitt hinted, “Well, folks, do you think you could stand breaking the law a little?”

They looked at Chum Frink, the recognized lord of language.  Frink pulled at his eye-glass cord as at a bell-rope, he cleared his throat and said that which was the custom: 

“I’ll tell you, George:  I’m a law-abiding man, but they do say Verg Gunch is a regular yegg, and of course he’s bigger ’n I am, and I just can’t figure out what I’d do if he tried to force me into anything criminal!”

Gunch was roaring, “Well, I’ll take a chance—­” when Frink held up his hand and went on, “So if Verg and you insist, Georgie, I’ll park my car on the wrong side of the street, because I take it for granted that’s the crime you’re hinting at!”

There was a great deal of laughter.  Mrs. Jones asserted, “Mr. Frink is simply too killing!  You’d think he was so innocent!”

Babbitt clamored, “How did you guess it, Chum?  Well, you-all just wait a moment while I go out and get the—­keys to your cars!” Through a froth of merriment he brought the shining promise, the mighty tray of glasses with the cloudy yellow cocktails in the glass pitcher in the center.  The men babbled, “Oh, gosh, have a look!” and “This gets me right where I live!” and “Let me at it!” But Chum Frink, a traveled man and not unused to woes, was stricken by the thought that the potion might be merely fruit-juice with a little neutral spirits.  He looked timorous as Babbitt, a moist and ecstatic almoner, held out a glass, but as he tasted it he piped, “Oh, man, let me dream on!  It ain’t true, but don’t waken me!  Jus’ lemme slumber!”