“As most travelers do,” Sylvia added.
They also went together to several plays, at which Sylvia laughed very heartily, much to Mrs. Gainsborough’s chagrin.
“I’m bothered if I know what you’re laughing at,” she said, finally. “I can’t understand a word of what they’re saying.”
“Just as well you can’t,” Sylvia told her.
“Now there’s a tantalizing hussy for you. But I can guess, you great tomboy.”
Whereupon Mrs. Gainsborough laughed as heartily as anybody in the audience at her own particular thoughts. She attracted a good deal of attention by this, because she often laughed at them without reference to what was happening on the stage. When Sylvia dug her in the ribs to make her keep quiet, she protested that, if she could only tell the audience what she was thinking, they would not bother any more about the stage.
“A penny for your thoughts, they say. I reckon mine are worth the price of a seat in the circle, anyway.”
It was after this performance that Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough went to the Café de la Chouette, which was frequented mostly by the performers, poets, and composers of the music-hall world. The place was crowded, and they were forced to sit at a table already occupied by one of those figures that only in Paris seem to have the right to live on an equality with the rest of mankind, merely on account of their eccentric appearance. He was probably not more than forty years old, but his gauntness made him look older. He wore blue-and-white checked trousers, a tail coat from which he or somebody else had clipped off the tails, a red velvet waistcoat, and a yachting-cap. His eyes were cavernous, his cheeks were rouged rather than flushed with fever. He carried a leather bag slung round his middle filled with waste paper, from which he occasionally took out a piece and wrote upon it a few words. He was drinking an unrecognizable liqueur.
Mrs. Gainsborough was rather nervous of sitting down beside so strange a creature, but Sylvia insisted. The man made no gesture at their approach, but turned his eyes upon them with the impassivity of a cat.
“Look here, Sylvia, in two twos he’s going to give me an attack of the horrors,” Mrs. Gainsborough whispered. “He’s staring at me and twitching his nose like a hungry child at a jam roll. It’s no good you telling me to give over. I can’t help it. Look at his eyes. More like coal-cellars than eyes. I’ve never been able to abide being stared at since I sat down beside a wax-work at Louis Tussaud’s and asked it where the ladies’ cloak-room was.”