"Stewart Thrall!" threateningly exclaimed Miss Morrell, as she lighted the spirit-lamp beneath the coffee-pot.
"A victim to coffee! Morning, noon, or night, her one cry is 'Coffee!' Ah, it's sad! Such a promising young-creature as she was, too! But you see what coffee has brought her to!"
"I'll buy a French pot and a bottle of alcohol on the way home," laughed Sybil, "and see where it will land me!"
"Gracious!" cried Dorothy, "you will land in a sanitarium if you attempt to increase the amount of coffee you are taking already!"
"Oh, are you one of the devotees of the little brown berry?" asked Miss Morrell. "Well, we are three, then, for that man there adores it, in spite of his jibes at me!"
"I drink but a reasonable amount," declared Thrall, "while you—Miss Lawton, will you push that biscuit-jar this way? Do you know, when the rehearsal is called, this enslaved creature drinks coffee because work is beginning. Later she drinks coffee because work is over. When it is cold, she drinks coffee to warm her. When it is warm, she drinks coffee to cool her!"
"My very dear friend," interrupted Miss Morrell, "there is a strangely familiar sound about all that. Do you really believe no one else ever heard of Thackeray?"
"And Thackeray's daughter?" laughed Sybil.
"Who read Dickens," added Dorothy, with dancing eyes.
"'When she was glad, she read Dickens,'" quoted Miss Morrell.