“Expect it every minute. Here comes Leà now with the soup and Mignon with hot plates.”
Louis caught sight of the two women, backed himself against the jamb of the fireplace, and opened wide his arms.
“Make way, gentlemen!” he cried. “Behold the lost saint—our Lady of the Sabots!—and the adorable Mademoiselle Mignon! I kiss the tips of your fingers, mademoiselle. And now tell me where that fisher-boy is—that handsome young fellow Gaston I heard about when I was last here. What have you done with him? Has he drowned himself because you wouldn’t be called in church, or is he saving up his sous to put a new straw thatch on his mother’s house so there will be room for two more?”
Pretty Mignon blushed scarlet and kept straight on to the serving-table without daring to answer—Gaston was a tender subject to her, almost as tender as Mignon was to Gaston—but Leà, after depositing the tureen at the top of the table, made a little bob of a curtsy, first to Herbert and then to Louis and Brierley—thanking them for coming, and adding, in her quaint Normandy French, that she would have gone home a month since had not the master told her of our coming.
“And have broken our hearts, you lovely old gargoyle!” laughed Louis. “Don’t you dare leave the Inn. They are getting on very well at the church without you. Come, Herbert, down with you in the old Florentine. I’ll sit next so I can keep all three wooden heads in order,” and he wheeled the chair into place.
“Now, Leà—the soup!”
III
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO A CERTAIN COLONY OF PENGUINS
Lemois, as was his custom, came in with the coffee. He serves it himself, and always with the same little ceremony, which, while apparently unimportant, marks that indefinable, mysterious line which he and his ancestry—innkeepers before him—have invariably maintained between those who wait and those who are waited upon. First, a small spider-legged mahogany table is wheeled up between the circle and the fire, on which Leà places a silver coffee-pot of Mignon’s best; then some tiny cups and saucers, and a sugar-dish of odd design—they said it belonged to Marie Antoinette—is laid beside them. Thereupon Lemois gravely seats himself and the rite begins, he talking all the time—one of us and yet aloof—much as would a neighbor across a fence who makes himself agreeable but who has not been given the run of your house.