“He was carrying his bait––horrid, wriggling angleworms––in our soup plate!”
“Then it is not broken yet!” I exclaimed joyfully. “Let us hope it is given an antiseptic bath before father’s next indulgence in consommé. After dinner I will go over and try my luck at paying my respects to the soup savant.”
“They won’t let you in.”
“In that case I shall follow their lead of setting aside all ceremony and formality and admit myself, as their heir apparent does here.”
After dinner and my twilight smoke, I went next door, first asking Silvia if there was anything we needed that I could 18 borrow, just to show them there were no hard feelings.
My third vigorous ring brought results. A slipshod servant appeared and reluctantly seated me in the hall. She read with seeming interest the card I handed to her and then, pushing aside some mangy looking portières, vanished from view.
She evidently delivered my card, for I heard a woman’s voice read my name, “Mr. Lucien Wade.”
After another short interval the slovenly servant returned and offered me my card.
“She seen it,” she assured me in answer to my look of surprise.
She again put the portières between us and I was obliged to own myself baffled in my efforts to break in. I was showing myself out when my onward course was 19 deflected by a troop of noisy children leaded by the soup plate skirmisher, who was the oldest and apparently the leader of the brood.