Old Krakow caught her by both shoulders and began to brag outrageously.
"This is my work--this is what I brought into being--I'm the father of this," and so on.
She tried to shake him off and turned scarlet.
Aha, ashamed of him.
Then the ladies got the table ready for coffee. Fresh brown waffles, preserves after the Russian fashion, gleaming damask, knives and spoons with buckhorn handles, the fine blue smoke of charcoal puffing up from the chimney of the brass coffee machine, making everything still cosier.
We sat there drinking our coffee. Old Krakow blustered, the Baroness smiled a fine melancholy smile, and Iolanthe made eyes at me.
Yes, gentlemen, made eyes at me. You may be at the time of life when that sort of thing happens to you none too rarely. But just you get to be well on in your forties, conscious to the very depths of your soul of your fatness and baldness, and you'll see how grateful you'll be even to a housemaid or a barmaid for taking the trouble to ogle you. And a thousand times more so if she happens to be one of the élite like this one, a creature allowed to walk this earth by God's grace.
At first I thought I hadn't seen straight, then I stuck my red hands in my pockets, then I got a fit of coughing, then I swore at myself--"You blooming idiot! you donkey!"--then I wanted to bolt, and finally I took to staring into my empty coffee cup. Like an old maid.
But when I looked up--I had to look up now and then--I always met those great, light-blue languishing eyes. They seemed to say:
"Don't you know I am an enchanted princess whom you are to set free?"