“I was beginning to believe that it is foolish and perhaps pretentious and often boring, as well as damnably expensive, to make a meal of four or six courses just because the guests who are to eat it have always been used to that many. Let them try eating two or three things, I said, so plentiful and so interesting and so well cooked that they will be satisfied. And if they are not satisfied, let them stay away from our table, and our leisurely comfortable friendship at that table.

I talked like that, and it worried Al a little, because he had been raised in a minister's family and had been taught that the most courteous way to treat guests was to make them feel as if they were in their own homes. I, to his well-controlled embarrassment, was beginning to feel quite sure that one of the best things I could do for nine-tenths of the people I knew was to give them something that would make them forget Home and all it stood for, for a few blessed moments at least.”