"Must keep up your pecker—never say die!" Franky, stimulated by the pangs of hunger, developed an unsuspected talent for diplomacy. "Look here! We must talk over things quietly and calmly. I'll order a taxi, and we'll chuff to that jolly little restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne—where you can grub in the open air under a rose-pergola—and order something special and odd——"
Since Eve's day, this lure has never failed to catch a woman. Margot began to dry her eyes. Then she asked Franky to ring.
"Three times, please.... That's for Pauline; I want another handkerchief."
"Have two or three while you're about it," advised Franky, obeying, returning, and perching on the arm of the settee. "And bathe your eyes a bit, have a swab-over of the pinky cream-stuff, and a dab of powder." He brushed some pale mealy traces from his right-arm sleeve and coat-lapel, ending, "And put on your swankiest hat and come along to Nadier's."
"Could we get anything to eat at Nadier's that we couldn't get here—or in London, at the Tarlton or the Rocroy? ..."
"Stacks of things! For instance—Canard à la presse.... They squeeze the juice out of the duck, you twig, with a silver kind of squozzer, and cook it on a chafing-dish under your nose. Look here! ..." Franky, now desperate, produced his watch. "All the cushiest little tables will be taken if you don't look sharp."
"Not on the day of the Grand Prix!"
Franky retorted, spurred to maddest invention by the pangs of hunger:
"My best child, there are about a hundred thousand wealthy Americans in Paris who don't care a red cent about racing, while with most of 'em—to eat canard à la presse at Nadier's in the Bois de Boulogne in the June season—is a—kind of religious rite!"
So Margot disappeared to dab her eyes and apply the prescribed touches of perfumed cream and powder, and duly reappeared, crowned with the most marvellous hat that ever promenaded the ateliers of the Maison Blin on the head of a milliner's mannequin.