“Do keep those children quiet!” said the father.
“Hush, my dears,” said the mother; “let your father write. Comedy seems to give you more trouble than tragedy, James,” added she, soothingly.
“Yes,” was his answer. “Sorrow comes somehow more natural to me; but for all that I have got a bright thought, Mrs. Triplet. Listen, all of you. You see, Jane, they are all at a sumptuous banquet, all the dramatis personae, except the poet.”
Triplet went on writing, and reading his work out: “Music, sparkling wine, massive plate, rose-water in the hand-glasses, soup, fish—shall I have three sorts of fish? I will; they are cheap in this market. Ah! Fortune, you wretch, here at least I am your master, and I'll make you know it—venison,” wrote Triplet, with a malicious grin, “game, pickles and provocatives in the center of the table; then up jumps one of the guests, and says he—”
“Oh dear, I am so hungry.”
This was not from the comedy, but from one of the boys.
“And so am I,” cried a girl.
“That is an absurd remark, Lysimachus,” said Triplet with a suspicious calmness. “How can a boy be hungry three hours after breakfast?”
“But, father, there was no breakfast for breakfast.”
“Now I ask you, Mrs. Triplet,” appealed the author, “how I am to write comic scenes if you let Lysimachus and Roxalana here put the heavy business in every five minutes?”