"Ah, bah, brother Jacques!" exclaimed Madame Roquet, impatiently, "don't give us that old story of the miller and the gray colt, this evening! We've all heard it a hundred times already. Sing us a song instead, mon ami!"
"I shall be happy to sing, sister Marie," replied Monsieur Robineau, with somewhat husky dignity, "when I have finished my story. You may have heard the story before. So may André--so may Suzette--so may my wife. I admit it. But these gentlemen--these gentlemen who have never heard it, and who have done me the honor...."
"Not to listen to a word of it," said Madame Robineau, sharply. "There, you are answered, husband. Drink your punch, and hold your tongue."
Monsieur Robineau waved his hand majestically, and assumed a Parliamentary air.
"Madame Robineau," he said, getting more and more husky, "be so obliging as to wait till I ask for your advice. With regard to drinking my punch, I have drunk it--" and here he again stared down into the bottom of his glass, which was again empty--"and with regard to holding my tongue, that is my business, and--and...."
"Monsieur Robineau," said Dalrymple, "allow me to offer you some more punch."
"Not another drop, Jacques," said Madame, sternly. "You have had too much already."
Poor Monsieur Robineau, who had put out his glass to be refilled, paused and looked helplessly at his wife.
"Mon cher ange,...." he began; but she shook her head inflexibly, and Monsieur Robineau submitted with the air of a man who knows that from the sentence of the supreme court there is no appeal.
"Dâme!" whispered Madame Roquet, with a confidential attack upon my ribs that gave me a pain in my side for half an hour after, "my brother has the heart of a rabbit. He gives way to her in everything--so much the worse for him. My blessed man, who was a saint of a husband, would have broken the bowl over my ears if I had dared to interfere between his glass and his mouth!"