prettily coloured for dinner-table use, and he will make the story
prove a merit in himself, which he will take care to disclaim vainly.
When he has finished, look very meditatively at your plate, as if you
saw visions in it, and then turn on him suddenly with wide eyes--with
the right kind of eyelashes, this is effective.

"I suppose you don't know it, Mr. BLANK," you tell him, "but really I
can't help saying it. You behaved splendidly--splendidly!"

Droop the eyelashes quickly, and become meditative again. He will
deprecate your compliment a little incoherently.

"Not at all, not at all--Miss--er--ASTERISK--I really--assure
you--nothing more than any--er--other man would have done. Some
other people at the time told me"--(_laughs nervously_)--"very
much--er--what you have just said, but--er--personally,
I--really--could never see it, or of course I wouldn't have mentioned
it to you."

Your rejoinder will depend a good deal on how far you mean to go, and
how much of that kind of thing you think you can stand. If you like,
you can drop your handkerchief or your glove when you rise; it will
please him to pick it up for you, and he will feel, for a moment, as
if he had saved your life.

If you do not want to please the man, but only to show your own
superiority, it may perhaps be as well to remember that women are
better than men, as a rule, in flat badinage. Men talk best when they
are by themselves, but they are liable to be painfully natural at such
times. I had some little difficulty in finding this out, but I thought