"This is too bad!" cried Horace; "my friends may be here at any moment now—and nothing done. You don't propose to wait at table like that, do you?" he added, as he noted the man's overcoat and the comforter round his throat.
"I do not propose to wait in any garments whatsoever," said Rapkin; "I'm a-goin' out, I am."
"Very well," said Horace; "then send the waiter up—I suppose he's come?"
"He come—but he went away again—I told him as he wouldn't be required."
"You told him that!" Horace said angrily, and then controlled himself. "Come, Rapkin, be reasonable. You can't really mean to leave your wife to cook the dinner, and serve it too!"
"She ain't intending to do neither; she've left the house already."
"You must fetch her back," cried Horace. "Good heavens, man, can't you see what a fix you're leaving me in? My friends have started long ago—it's too late to wire to them, or make any other arrangements."
There was a knock, as he spoke, at the front door; and odd enough was the familiar sound of the cast-iron knocker in that Arabian hall.
"There they are!" he said, and the idea of meeting them at the door and proposing an instant adjournment to a restaurant occurred to him—till he suddenly recollected that he would have to change and try to find some money, even for that. "For the last time, Rapkin," he cried in despair, "do you mean to tell me there's no dinner ready?"
"Oh," said Rapkin, "there's dinner right enough, and a lot o' barbarious furriners downstairs a cookin' of it—that's what broke Maria's 'art—to see it all took out of her 'ands, after the trouble she'd gone to."