"We can't afford a hired girl (I suppose I should say a 'maid'), because mamma has put so much of our money into Ray's business, so you mustn't expect anything so very grand. But you'd like to help, wouldn't you? You're to chop the cheese. Cut it into weenty cubes."
Carl did like to help. He boasted that he was the "champion cheese-chopper of Harlem and the Bronx, one-thirty-three ringside," while Gertie was toasting crackers, and Ray was out buying bottles of beer in a newspaper. It all made Carl feel more than ever at home.... It was good to be with people of such divine understanding that they knew what he meant when he said, "I suppose there have been worse teachers than Prof Larsen——!"
When the rabbit lay pale in death, a saddening débâcle of hardened cheese, and they sat with their elbows on the Modified Mission dining-table, Gertie exclaimed:
"Oh, Ray, you must do that new stunt of yours for Carl. It's screamingly funny, Carl."
Ray rose, had his collar and tie off in two jocund jerks, buttoned his collar on backward, cheerily turned his waistcoat back side foremost, lengthened his face to an expression of unctuous sanctimoniousness, and turned about—transformed in one minute to a fair imitation of a stage curate. With his hands folded, Ray droned, "Naow, sistern, it behooveth us heuh in St. Timothee's Chutch," while Carl pounded the table in his delight at seeing old Ray, the broad-shouldered, the lady-killer, the capable business man, drop his eyes and yearn.
"Now you must do a stunt!" shrieked Ray and Gertie; and Carl hesitatingly sang what he remembered of Forrest Haviland's foolish song:
"I went up in a balloon so big
The people on the earth they looked like a pig,
Like a mice, like a katydid, like flieses and like fleasen."
Then, without solicitation, Gertie decided to dance "Gather the Golden Sheaves," which she had learned at the school of Mme. Vashkowska, late (though not very late) of the Russian ballet.
She explained her work; outlined the theory of sensuous and esthetic dancing; mentioned the backgrounds of Bakst and the glories of Nijinsky; told her ambition to teach the New Dancing to children. Carl listened with awe; and with awe did he gaze as Gertie gathered the Golden Sheaves—purely hypothetical sheaves in a field occupying most of the living-room.
After the stunts Ray delicately vanished. It was not so much that he statedly went off to bed as that, presently, he was not there. Gertie and Carl were snugly alone, and at last he talked—of Forrest Haviland and Tony Bean, of flying and falling, of excited crowds and the fog-filled air-lanes.