Mary Ann silently went to the mantel-piece, handed him the matches, and left the room without a word.
"I say, Lancelot, adversity doesn't seem to have agreed with you," said Peter, severely. "That poor girl's eyes were quite wet when she went out. Why didn't you speak? I could have given you heaps of lights, and you might even have sacrificed another scrap of that precious manuscript."
"Well, she has got a knack of hiding my matches all the same," said Lancelot, somewhat shamefacedly. "Besides, I hate her for being called Mary Ann. It's the last terror of cheap apartments. If she only had another name like a human being, I'd gladly call her Miss something. I went so far as to ask her, and she stared at me in a dazed, stupid, silly way, as if I'd asked her to marry me. I suppose the fact is she's been called Mary Ann so long and so often that she's forgotten her father's name—if she ever had any. I must do her the justice, though, to say she answers to the name of Mary Ann in every sense of the phrase."
"She didn't seem at all bad-looking, anyway," said Peter.
"Every man to his taste!" growled Lancelot. "She's as platt and uninteresting as a wooden sabot."
"There's many a pretty foot in a sabot," retorted Peter, with an air of philosophy.
"You think that's clever, but it's simply silly. How does that fact affect this particular sabot?"
"I've put my foot in it," groaned Peter, comically.
"Besides, she might be a houri from heaven," said Lancelot; "but a houri in a patched print frock—" He shuddered and struck a match.
"I don't know exactly what houris from heaven are, but I have a kind of feeling any sort of frock would be out of harmony—!"