“Yes,” he admitted quickly, “but I could eat another.”
Assuming that the forced inquiry was an invitation, before protest could be entered he supplied himself with a plate and helped himself to food. His need and relish of the meal weakened Silvia’s fortifications.
This opening, of course, was the wedge that let in other Polydores, and thereafter 32 we seldom sat down to a meal without the presence of one or more members of the illustrious and famished family, who made themselves as entirely at home as would a troop of foraging soldiers. Silvia gazed upon their devouring of food with the same surprised, shocked, and yet interested manner in which one watches the feeding of animals.
“I suppose he ought not to eat so many pickles,” she remarked one day, as Emerald consumed his ninth Dill.
“You can’t kill a Polydore,” I assured her.
I never opened a door but more or less Polydores fell in. They were at the left of us and at the right of us, with Diogenes always under foot. We had no privacy. I found myself waking suddenly in the night with the uncomfortable feeling that Ptolemy lurked in a dark corner or two of my bedroom.
Even Silvia’s boudoir was not free from their invasion. But one door in our house remained closed to them. They found no open sesame to Huldah’s apartment.
“I wish she would let me in on her system,” I said. “I wonder how she manages to keep them on the outside?”
“I can tell you,” confided Silvia. “Emerald and Demetrius went in one day and she dropped Demetrius out the window and kicked Emerald out the door. You know, Lucien, you are too softhearted to resort to such measures.”