One word from the head of the house, as Captain Miltiades was called, full twenty years his senior, was enough to silence Themistocles, who retired into his room, and proceeded to make a careful study of the libretto of “La Princesse des Canaries.”
The third tap that morning at the glass door of the street, announcing the return of Andromache and her mother, was the cheerful herald of breakfast. Everybody was seated at table, wearing a more or less bellicose air, while Theodore, looking as correct and rigid as an ill-fitting military undress would permit, served out the pilaf when Andromache and Kyria Karapolos entered the dining-room.
Andromache took her seat in silence beside Julia, and slowly unfolded her napkin with an absent air, and her mother at the head of the table began to puff and pant and violently fan herself.
“Pooh! pooh! pooh! what a woman! I thought she would eat poor Andromache.”
“The music-woman,” remarked Captain Miltiades, indistinctly, through a mouthful of pilaf.
“A savage, Miltiades. She has a servant just like herself, who received us as if we were beggars, and told us to go upstairs and look for the Natzelhuber ourselves. And when we went up, there was a nice-looking young gentleman with her, a foreigner, fair, I should say an Englishman or a Russian—what country do you think he comes from, Andromache?”
“Who, mamma?” asked Andromache, coming down from the clouds.
“That fair young man we saw at Natzelhuber’s.”
“I don’t know, I did not pay much attention to him,” Andromache replied; and turned her eyes to the dish of roast meat Theodore was placing on the table.