"What, visitors?" said Mac, touching the dimples in their cheeks; and they nodded and looked at each other in a very taking way they had. Bill came in hastily. "They came in this afternoon," she explained, "and asked most solemnly if they might have some tea. Ma was gone to New York, they said, and she might be late."
"'That so?" said Mac. "Well, we'll have 'em to dinner as well. What 'say, you chaps? Will you have dinner with us?"
Again they nodded and looked at each other, and Ben remarked gravely that they were hungry.
We went off to have a wash and a change.
They certainly were two pretty little men as they stood there in red jerseys and blue corduroy knickers. My friend's custom of snatching open the piano and heralding dinner with a furious tornado of chords pleased them vastly.
"What's that for?" Beppo inquired expectantly.
"Chop," said Mac, rumpling their hair. "Pipe all hands to the galley. Here comes the salt horse and the hard tack."
"Their father isn't a deck-swab," I remarked mildly.
"Perhaps not," he retorted, "but pipe all hands etcetera is in that comic opera I'm illustrating and doing the costumes for, and I've got it on the brain. Have you noticed," he went on, "that Carville seems to have no professional slang?"
"He's not typical of his class," I admitted. "Any more than his wife is of her's, I suppose. Moreover, he knows we know nothing of his work and explains it in simple language. Does it not occur to you," I inquired, "that his avoidance of slang and dialect and foreign words and profanity is part of the freedom of the other side of the wall? Think of what we have lived through in the last twenty years! We have listened to a tale of the ends of the earth and the teller of it neither foams at the mouth nor talks in a strange technical jargon nobody ever spoke and nobody can understand. Without naming any names, isn't it a relief? Isn't it refreshing? After the terrible experiences we have had in the past!"