Marie, restored to good humor, came out to greet them, and both men bowed ceremoniously over her hand, clicking their heels together and bowing from the waist. Byrne sniffed.
“What do I smell, Marie?” he demanded. “Surely not sausages!”
Marie dimpled. It was an old joke, to be greeted as one greets an old friend. It was always sausages.
“Sausages, of a truth—fat ones.'
“But surely not with mustard?”
“Ach, ja—englisch mustard.”
Stewart and Boyer had gone on ahead. Marie laid a detaining hand on Byrne's arm.
“I was very angry with you to-day.”
“With me?”
Like the others who occasionally gathered in Stewart's unconventional menage, Byrne had adopted Stewart's custom of addressing Marie in English, while she replied in her own tongue.