"None, I suppose," I said. "Only, - what would you think of a lady who sat down regularly to eat sugar-plums three or four times a day and the last thing before going to bed? and who evidently could not live without them."
"But why not take a sugar-plum, or a cigar, as well as other things - wine, or fruit, for instance?" said Marshall.
"It is an indulgence - but we all allow ourselves indulgences of one sort or another."
"Besides, with a lady it is different," said De Saussure. "We poor fellows have nothing better to do, half the time."
I had no wish to lecture Mr. De Saussure, but I could not help looking at him, which again seemed to rouse their amusement.
"You seem to say, that is an insignificant way of life," Hugh
Marshall added.
"We'll try for something better to-morrow," said De Saussure. "We have laid a plan to go to see the lake of Annecy, Miss Randolph, if we can secure your company and approbation. It will just take the day; and I propose that each one of us shall go prepared to instruct the others, at luncheon, as to his or her views of the worthiest thing a man can do with his life; - cigars being banished."
"Cigars are not banished yet," said Ransom, taking delicate whiffs of his own, which sent a fragrant wreath of blue smoke curling about his face.
"What do you say, Miss Randolph?" Hugh asked.
"Wouldn't you like to see the house of Eugene Sue?" said De
Saussure.