"Do you think it a nice name?"
"Not particularly."
"Well, it's better than Grille d'Egout anyway, isn't it?"
"About on a par, I should say." "How many frills do you think she had on her petticoat?"
"Oh, I don't know—forty!"
"No; four. I counted them. Her figure is not much up atop, but her"—
"Oh, stow all that!" I interrupted; "there's a good fellow, I'm just doing a convent interior."
"All right. The rest is silence. Ah!" with a yawn, and getting up to saunter round the room, "that's a jolly good song—Embrace moi! chumph! chumph! Encore une fois!! chumph! chumph!"
He did not address me again, but somehow my ideas were scattered. The convent scene went wrong. Ballet dancers seemed standing in the aisle where nuns should have been kneeling, and, after a second or so, I flung my pen down and pushed away the paper.
"Done?" exclaimed Howard, delightedly.