"It isn't I this time, it is Jack. He has bought you the most adorable little silver hanging-lamp you ever saw. Open it, Jack; or shall we wait till we are seated in Old Vienna?"
"You told him I wanted it, you naughty girl."
"No, I didn't." Mildred was bubbling over with mischievous satisfaction in Van Tassel's struggles to look bland. "It was purely spontaneous on his part. I even went so far as to urge him not to get it. Didn't I, Jack?"
Van Tassel's reply was scarcely audible; but they had reached the guard, who with puffed sleeves and feathered hat stood motionless, spear in hand, before the entrance to the Vienna of two hundred years ago.
Inside they found the Pages, standing before one of the many open shops which formed the first floors of the weather-stained, peaked, and turreted houses.
"Hilda is buying a spoon," announced Mr. Page as his friends approached; "but that goes without saying. I have kept careful count, and this is the seventy-seventh she has purchased while with me. Of course there may be others. I can't tell what pleasant surprises may be awaiting me when we get home."
"How was the Chinese theatre?" asked Gorham, while Clover and Mildred gravitated naturally to Mrs. Page's side to lend her their aid in deciding between the merits of two spoons she was examining.
"Immense; you must go."
"You mustn't go unless you want to be driven crazy with noise," put in Hilda. "Robert says I am deficient in the sense of humor, but you positively can't think in that place. There was a Chinese-American in the audience acting as an interpreter, and I suppose he saw that Robert was interested; so he just stayed with us, and put the crowning touch to the confusion by explaining the play at a pitch to be heard above the squealing music and the shrieking actors."
"Women's parts all taken by men, of course," explained her husband, "and they jabber in a high monotonous falsetto without any change of countenance except an occasional attack of pathetic strabismus. Two lovers meet after a separation of ten years. They start, then with two simultaneous squeaks fall backward in a swoon, feet to feet, and lie there with their elaborately dressed heads sticking up in the air, while a supe runs in with wooden supports which he tucks under their necks. The interpreter explained: 'Of course they cannot spoil their hair!' Ha! ha! It was great; and as for the costumes and hangings, they would stand alone for the gold and silver embroidery in them. Confess, Hilda, they were consoling."