ege in the hospital, of your noble service to your country,
of your gallant conduct at----"

"Sit down, Papa Claude, and finish your oration after supper," cried
Rose; "the rabbit won't wait on anybody."

Thus cut short, Mr. Martel took his seat and, nothing daunted, helped
himself bountifully to everything within reach.

"I am a gourmet, Sergeant Graham, but not a gourmand. Edwin Booth used to
say----"

"Sir?" answered Edwin Booth's namesake from the kitchen, where he had
been dispatched for more bread.

"No, no, my son, I was referring to----"

But Papa Claude, as usual, did not get to finish the sentence. The advent
of the next-door neighbor, who had been invited and then forgotten,
caused great amusement owing to the fact that there was no more supper
left.

"Give her some bread and jam, Myrna," said Rose; "and if the jam is out,
bring the brown sugar. You don't mind, do you, Fan?"

Fan, an amiable blonde person who was going to be fat at forty, declared
that she didn't want a thing to eat, honestly she didn't, and that
besides she adored bread and brown sugar.

"We won't stop to wash up," said Rose; "Myrna will have loads of time to
do it in the morning, because she doesn't have to go to school. We'll
just clear the table and let the dishes stand."

"We are incorrigible Bohemians, as you observe," said Mr. Martel to Quin,
with a deprecating arching of his fine brows. "We lay too little stress,
I fear, on the conventions. But the exigencies of the dramatic
profession--of which, you doubtless know, I have been a member for the
past forty years----"

"Take him in the sitting-room, Mr. Graham," urged Rose; "I'll bring your
coffee in there."

Without apparently being conscious of the fact, Mr. Martel, still
discoursing in rounded periods, was transferred to the big chair beside
the lamp, while Quin took up his stand on the hearth-rug and looked about
him.

Such a jumble of a room as it was! Odds and ends of furniture, the
survival of various household wrecks; chipped bric-a-brac; a rug from
which the pattern had long ago vanished; an old couch piled with shabby
cushions; a piano with scattered music sheets. On the walls, from ceiling
to foot-board, hung faded photographs of actors and actresses, most of
them with bold inscriptions dashed across their corners in which the
donors invariably expressed their friendship, affection, or if the
chirography was feminine their devoted love, for "dear Claude Marte