Agatha stretched out her miniature hand. "Gimme," she said. "It's my glass. And, boy, do I need a slug!"
"Tell me, dear," Toffee said quietly, tilting the glass to Agatha's eager mouth, "whatever became of that lovely accent of yours?"
Agatha polished off the whiskey and burped. "None of your damned business," she said with truly childish simplicity.
By alternating between the two babes, a certain amount of decorum was maintained. Marc took charge of the stoking of Chadwick while Toffee continued in behalf of Agatha. Mr. Culpepper shoved a few volumes aside on one of the lower shelves and seated himself, watching with interest as the glass moved from hand to hand to bottle to baby. He looked like a spectator at a tennis game being played on a checker board. The glass shuttled from pouted lip to pouted lip until the inner infant, on both scores, had been fortified five times over. From this point on, as the whiskey poured down the tiny throats, a corresponding amount of exuberance arose via the same channel. Agatha, made congenial by the liquor, began to while away the time between drinks by lifting her childish voice in song.
"Becky lived in a Turkish harem," she chortled. "She had towels but she wouldn't wear 'em."
"Stop that caterwauling," Toffee commanded.
Agatha perversely increased her volume. "Becky looked like Theda Barer," she shrieked. "Theda was bare but Becky was barer!"
Suddenly a sharp, gasping sound echoed around the little group, seeming to come from no place in particular; the bookshelves themselves appeared to be making little twittering sounds of surprise. The Pillsworth party froze as it was. Eyes moved furtively in unturning heads. It was Toffee who discovered the cause of the interruption.
Several books had been removed from one of the upper shelves, leaving a sort of peep hole into the next section. In this opening had appeared the forbidding face of the spinsterish librarian. It bore the dismayed expression of a maiden lady who had inadvertently stumbled into a YMCA swimming pool.