Maurice got up from his chair and wandered round the room in search of note-paper. Not being able to find any, he pinned a large sheet of drawing-paper to a board and produced a pencil.
"Look at him," laughed Jenny. "Look at the Great Millionaire. Just because he's come into money, he can't write on anything smaller than a blanket."
"It's not ostentation," Maurice declared. "It's laziness—a privilege of the very poor, as you ought to know by this time. I can't find any note-paper."
"I should think you couldn't. I wonder you can find yourself in this room."
"Come along," urged the owner of it. "We must begin. Maurice and Jenny. Then Fuz and Maudie, Ronnie and Irene, Cunningham and Madge. Any more you can think of?"
"You don't mean to say you've taken that unnatural piece of paper just to write those few names which we could have thought of in our heads. What would you do with him?"
"We want another eight," Maurice declared.
"Perhaps it is," he agreed. "Well, now, Maurice will be Théophile Gautier—no, he won't—the red waistcoat knocks him out—Edmond de Goncourt? No, he had a mustache. Chopin? Long hair. Look here, I don't think we'll be anybody in particular. We'll just be ladies and gentlemen of the period. You know you girls have got to wear crinolines and fichus and corkscrew curls."
"Like we used to wear in Bohême in the Opera?"