"Let them come in again soon," said Mac. "We would like to say 'any time,' you know, but we're like parsons and doctors, we work at home and we can't have holidays every day."
"I am glad they have been no trouble," she replied, regarding them with a preoccupied approval.
"Trouble!" My friend was indignant. "We haven't enjoyed ourselves so much in years, I assure you, Mrs. Carville. You've had a good time, you chaps, eh?" he asked them and they nodded with reminiscent delight shining in their eyes. "Bully!" said Beppo, and Ben, more taciturn, added an expressive glance at his brother that signified profound assent. I found their scarlet woolen caps while my friend expatiated upon the delightful privilege of having two such fine little chaps. Mrs. Carville at first sought, by a quick glance at her hostess, some sympathy for her own soberer feelings in the matter. But Bill, though not caring for children to madness, had fallen in love with these two, and gave to them much of the credit for their pretty ways and well-bred habits that by right belonged to their mother. And so Mrs. Carville, seeing only corroborative enthusiasm in Bill's expression, turned to me.
"To us they are angels," I explained, laughing, "and you must permit us to love them in our own way. It is so easy to love without responsibility, you know."
She pondered this an instant, looking at me sombrely the while and then illumination came, and she flashed a glance of vivid answering intelligence and nodded.
"Yes," she said, turning to the door, and lifting the latch. "Yes," she repeated, opening the door and looking out into the night. "It is very easy."
And the next moment they were gone and we were alone once more.
"Gee!" said my friend, yawning. "If I'm not all in!"
"You've both got to go straight to bed," said his wife briskly. "You won't be worthy thirty cents in the morning, and you'll just loaf round and ..."
The telephone bell whirred and Mac closed his mouth abruptly on his third consecutive yawn and sprang to the instrument. We sat and watched. There was some little trouble on the line at first, common in party lines where outside bells sometimes ring and the owners have to be pacified. Then "Oh yes"——"Yes, I hear you——Yes" and a long unintelligible series of affirmatives in different keys. My friend's face and figure gradually lost all appearance of fatigue. His eyes sharpened and glared at us over the receiver as he listened and said "yes" with exasperating reiteration. His wife signalled dolefully to me that it was probably a bird's-eye view, and she'd never get him up in the morning to catch the seven o'clock. It occurred to me at the time that bird's-eye views are not usually ordered at ten o'clock at night; but I was too absorbed in watching my friend's expression of bewilderment, doubt, delight and anticipation in rapid succession, and I did no more than shrug. At length he smiled broadly, remarked, "Right. I'll get busy. See you later, Jimmy. G'bye," and rang off. And then, to my amazement and his wife's indignation, he threw his heels in the air and walked across the room on his hands!