"After all, they are your best friends—he is your prince of poets, and she is your ideal heroine."
"One does not express friendship by laying traps—but go on," I urged, curious in spite of myself.
"Tea was distributed, and, either from laziness or diplomacy, Philip never vacated his perch. He sat intently watching her while she dipped inquiring fingers into each tier of the muffinière, and piled a huge meal on the Japanese plate at her elbow. She seemed bent on advertising a Cassowary digestion."
"An implied antithesis to poetic ideals," I volunteered, to enhance my sister's discomfiture.
"Perhaps so," owned Sarah, vexedly. "Girls are very contrary. But," she continued, "he perseveringly looked on with his quaint air of critical inquiry while she spread her handkerchief upon her lap, distending every corner in ostentatious preparation for her feast."
"Talking to him meanwhile?"
"Yes, par parenthese—between the nibbles at a chocolate bouchée, an anchovy muffin, two biscuits, and a tartine."
"My good Sarah, it is scarcely hospitable to register the appetites of your guests."
"I was really burning to hear them talk, but Percy Vansittart buttonholed me to say the muffinière had run short of supplies. We rang for a fresh consignment, then more music was proposed. I induced Vaudin to sing those exquisite verses of Philip's—about the poet's tears, you know, which froze to pearls on the neck of the woman he loved."
"Just the thing to annoy Lorraine!"