Peggy saw the one customer, and stiffened. Then she began to advance stealthily. The customer was a short, stocky man with a fringe of black hair round his bald head, and the arms and shoulders of a wrestler. He was just raising his glass to his lips when he seemed warned by some telepathic power. But before he could turn Peggy had pounced.
"Ah!" she said, dramatically. She paused. She drew back as though she could not believe her eyes. "Tiens, tno'n oncle! Qu'est-ce que je vois? Ah, mon Dieu, qu'est-ce que je vois, alors?"
She folded her arms.
The other started guiltily. He turned round and peered lip at her over the rim of his glass. He had a reddish face, a large mouth, and an enormous curled grey-streaked moustache. Morgan observed that the moment Peggy fell into the Gallic tongue her gestures corresponded. She became a whirlwind of rattling syllables. She rapidly smacked her hands together under the other's nose.
"Eh bien, eh bien! Encore tu bois! Toujours tu bois! Ah, zut, alors!" She became cutting. "Tu m'a donne votre parole d'honneur, comme un soldat de la France! Et qu'est-ce que je trouve? Un soldat de la France, hein! Non!" She drew back witheringly. "Je te vois en buvant le gin!"
This, unquestionably, was Uncle Jules sneaking out with the laudable purpose of knocking off a quick one before his niece caught him. A spasm contorted his face. Lifting his powerful shoulders, he spread out his arms with a gesture of extraordinary agony.
"Mais, cherie!" he protested in long-drawn, agonised insistence like a steamer's fog-horn. "Mais, che-e-riii-e! C'est un tres, tres, tres petit verre, tu sais! Regards-toi, cherie! Regards!! C'est une pauvre, miserable boule, tu sais. Je suis enrhume, cherie —he coughed hollowly, his; hand at his chest— "et ce soir—" 1
"Tu paries! Toi," she announced, pointing her finger at him and speaking in measured tones, "toi, je t'appelle degoutant!"
This seemed to crush Uncle Jules, who relapsed into a gloomy frame of mind. Morgan was introduced to him, and he followed them to a table while Morgan ordered! two double-whiskies and a milk-and-soda. Uncles Jules appealed in vain. He said he had never had so bad a cold in his life, coughing hideously by way of demonstration, and said that if nothing were done about it he would probably be speechless by five o'clock. Peggy made the obvious retort. She also adduced examples from a long list of Uncle Jules past colds, including the time in Buffalo when he had I been brought back to the hotel in an ash-cart.
He brightened a little, however, as he described the preparations for the performance that night. Preparations marched, he said, on a scale superb. Three hand-trucks had been provided to convey his fifty-eight separate marionettes (housed in a cabin of their own adjoining his, although they were not sea-sick, happy gosses) together with all the vast machinery of his theatre, to the hall of concert.