The students yelled with delight.
The girl Babette frowned impatiently, and going close to Horace, she whispered to him, caressingly.
Horace laughed, and led her by the hand to Betty:
“Babette wants to know if she may kiss you,” he said. “She says you are very beautiful——”
Betty laughed prettily, rose from her seat and kissed her. And, sitting down again, she drew the other down beside her on the divan.
Gaston Latour, at a dig of the elbow and mutter from the young American, started to blare upon the French horn—for there were tears in the eyes of the laughter-loving frail Babette.
The conversation turned to other things.
Horace announced that they were all now his guests, and were forthwith to have breakfast sent in from the restaurant near at hand; as he spoke he noticed that the girl Babette had taken Betty’s left hand in hers and was turning her wedding-ring round on her slender white finger.
Horace introduced the others to Betty and Noll:
Gaston Latour, who was essaying to bring dignity to the traditions of painting. Jack Pettigrew, the tall Yankee, whom also they afterwards came to know together with four other American students as one of the Five Foolish Virgins—the English students explained, because they were always late; but the French ones soon put the jest to roost in their open bewilderment at their dogged belief in the monogamies. Paul Kendrick of Boston, Massachusetts—which was the fault of Boston, and Paul wholly without blame in the matter. Kendrick bowed. Harcourt Phelps, another of the Five Foolish Virgins. Dick Davenant, known as the Disturber of Funerals, being one who always laughed in the wrong place. Dandy Donovan, the remaining Foolish Virgin. “Gobemouche” de Morneville, who was shirking the law, and catching flies when he should have been catching the subtleties of philosophy and the reasons for things. He put his heels together and solemnly bowed his close-cropped head. And half a dozen other young Frenchmen who talked the most ridiculous Ollendorffian English with serious unwinking eyes masking their fooling....