"Sit down, Papa Claude, and finish your oration after supper," cried Rose; "the rabbit won't wait on anybody."
Thus cut short, Mr. Martel took his seat and, nothing daunted, helped himself bountifully to everything within reach.
"I am a gourmet, Sergeant Graham, but not a gourmand. Edwin Booth used to say——"
"Sir?" answered Edwin Booth's namesake from the kitchen, where he had been dispatched for more bread.
"No, no, my son, I was referring to——"
But Papa Claude, as usual, did not get to finish the sentence. The advent of the next-door neighbor, who had been invited and then forgotten, caused great amusement owing to the fact that there was no more supper left.
"Give her some bread and jam, Myrna," said Rose; "and if the jam is out, bring the brown sugar. You don't mind, do you, Fan?"
Fan, an amiable blonde person who was going to be fat at forty, declared that she didn't want a thing to eat, honestly she didn't, and that besides she adored bread and brown sugar.
"We won't stop to wash up," said Rose; "Myrna will have loads of time to do it in the morning, because she doesn't have to go to school. We'll just clear the table and let the dishes stand."
"We are incorrigible Bohemians, as you observe," said Mr. Martel to Quin, with a deprecating arching of his fine brows. "We lay too little stress, I fear, on the conventions. But the exigencies of the dramatic profession—of which, you doubtless know, I have been a member for the past forty years——"