“I will teach you some day,” he said readily. “I have myself invented four cravats,” he added with pride.
“Will you teach me all the four?”
“Yes; I have thought, if I shall ever be poor, to go to Paris and have a cab and drive about from house to house each morning and tie cravats pour les messieurs. You can see how many would pay for that.”
“Yes; but when you arrived and they were not ready,—were still in bed, you know,—what would you do then?”
He reflected, and then shrugged his shoulders.
“I would put on the collar, tie the cravat, and leave monsieur to sleep again.”
Rosina’s marital past presented her mind with a lively picture of one of the cravat-tier’s clients struggling to bring his shirt into proper connection with the chef d’œuvre, when he should arise to attire himself for the day. She laughed outright. Then she grew sober and said:
“We ought to go back; it must be after five.”
He took out his watch.
“No, it is not.”