"Run down, dear, and get me some hot crescents. It's after four o'clock, so they'll be ready."
"Now, look here. You've got to be sensible. Everyone has hosts of things to do Christmas week. Nobody will come. We'll eat the cakes for supper. Let's go over the river."
"No, that wouldn't be fair. Somebody might come."
Herbert got the crescents, put more _boulets_ where I could get them easily, and was gone.
I settled myself in the steamer-chair. No sound except the ticking of our little traveling-clock, and the dropping of a _boulet_ on the hearth. An hour slipped by, and I began to realize that I might just as well have gone out. A ring at the bell. When I opened the door, there was my husband holding a bouquet of roses big enough for a bridesmaid.
"Good afternoon," said he, bowing low; "do Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons live here?"
"To be sure," said I, stifling a giggle. "I am Mrs. Gibbons."
"Indeed." My visitor shook hands with me and explained, "Mrs. Gibbons, I am delighted to meet you. I knew your husband years and years ago--before he was married, in fact. The first pleasure I have allowed myself in Paris is to look up my friend Gibbons and his wife."
He hung hat and overcoat in the hall, and handed me the flowers. "What a charming dining-room. Dear me, have I intruded? You were having a party?"
We chatted for a full hour, discussing the fate of the House of Lords, about which my new friend confided that he was writing an article. He hoped some editor would publish it. We talked of the possibilities of next year's Salons and disagreed on the subject of futurist painting. I told my visitor about the many American friends that were turning up, and how the Gibbonses realized that if they wanted to get any work done in Paris they would have to stop acting as guides. What did he think about adopting a policy of telling people that Thomas Cook had mighty good guides at ten francs a day? Perhaps, however, we should make the last exception with him, and show him the town.
We talked of Christmas, and then I was asked if I had a baby. I replied that of course I did. She was over in the Luxembourg Garden with Marie, who kept her out late on my at-home day, but who would soon bring her in.
"People that see resemblance in coloring say she looks like me, but those that see resemblance in contour say she's the image of her daddy."
