“But if any of my friends come in to see me?”
“I will receive them—varri nicely,” said the count.
We looked at each other for a solemn second and then burst out laughing.
“All right,” I said. “There are the books and magazines, there are the cigarettes, the matches are in that Japanese box and that cut glass bowl is full of chocolates.”
I left him and was gone till dark. At six I came back to find the room illuminated by every gas-jet and lamp and the count still there. He had quite a glad welcoming air, as if I might have been his mother or his maiden aunt.
“You here still,” I cried in the open doorway.
He gave one of his deep deliberate bows.
“I have been varri comfortable and warm,” he designated the center table with an expressive gesture, “I read magazines, I eat candy and I smoke—yes”—he looked with a proud air into the empty box—“yes, I smoke all the cigarettes.”
Then we went into the next house to find Mrs. Bushey.
My supper—eggs and cocoa—is cooked by me in the kitchenette. It is eaten in the dining-room or bedroom (the name of the apartment varies with the hour of the day) on one end of the table. The effect is prim and spinsterly—a tray cloth set with china and silver, a student lamp, and in the middle of the table, a small bunch of flowers. People send them sometimes and in the gaps when no one “bunches” me I buy them. To keep human every woman should have one extravagance.