“After all you provide the meals, and have a right to share in them.”
“I wonder,” I said, “that that did not occur to me before.”
She began something, broke off, then suddenly just lifted the hem of her skirt and projected a silvery foot.
“You have a right to see,” she said. “I thank you for your choice, Cousin.”
“It has come tripping to me through the moonlight,” I said, “and is all sparkling with dewy gossamer. A fairy’s slipper, and the fairy who wears it to be my guest. Why did you never tell me before that you came of the pretty people?”
“Because I thought you had eyes,” said Fifine, and, dropping her skirt, went on to dinner.
I think I had surpassed myself in that meal. Anyhow I enjoyed it. Fifine turned to me near the beginning with a question:—
“When you feel hungry you go to market? You just take your gun and hunt for a dinner, n’est ce pas? Do you always so live from hand to mouth?”
“Always, Cousin. It is the rare way to the unexpected, believe me. I have my camp-fire up here, and my cooking-pot, and all the intricacies of the neighbourhood to explore for its replenishing. That is the right way. I have dined with a written menu before me, and dined so without a thrill of the surprise which is the true sauce of gastronomy. We vagabonds are the real epicures—and more than that. The light of our festivity sometimes attracts to us strange comrades—creatures of the outer mysteries, bright or sullen, but always for their strangeness worth entertaining. Here, for instance, comes to me from the shadows a gauzy apparition, most welcome, it is true, yet shining very incongruity in this context of pot-luck and rough-and-ready.”
And so indeed it appeared to me; nor otherwise, save by fantasy, could I reconcile this vision of an elaborate evening toilette with its vagrant surroundings. But the fashionable convention, I supposed, when once acquired was ineradicable; and, no doubt, to have dined in undress would have seemed tantamount with Fifine to bathing in public.