The furniture was mahogany and leather, and when the sideboard was opened, the acrid odour of tea and the sickly smells of stale bread and rank butter were diffused through the room; but these were quickly dominated by the fumes of the malt. A bottle of port was decanted for the ladies. To the host nothing was too much trouble; his guests must eat as well as drink, and he went down to the kitchen and helped the maid-servant to bring up all the eatables that were in the house--some cold beef and cheese--and after having partaken of these the company stretched themselves in their chairs. Hayes drank his whisky in silence, while Montgomery, his legs thrown over the arm of his chair, tried to get in a word concerning the refrain of a comic song he had just finished scoring; but as the song was not going to be sung in any of the pieces they were touring with, no one was interested, and Mortimer's talk about the regeneration of the theatre was becoming so boring that Leslie and Beaumont had begun to think of bedtime, and might have taken their departure if Dubois had not said that all the great French actresses had lovers and that the English would do well to follow their examples. A variety of opinions broke forth, and everyone seemed to wake up; anecdotes were told that brought the colour to Kate's cheeks and made her feel uncomfortable. Dubois had lived a great deal in France; it was not certain that he had not acted in French, and sitting with his bishop's hat tilted on the back of his head, he related that Agar had described George Sand as a sort of pouncing disease that had affected her health more than all her other lovers put together. Dubois was declared to have insulted the profession; Dick agreed that Dubois did not know what he was talking about--George Sand was a woman, not a man--and Montgomery, who had a sister-in-law starring in Scotland, refused to be appeased until he was asked to accompany Leslie and Bret in a duet. The thin man, as everybody now called him, said he had never been so much touched in his life, a statement which Beaumont did her best to justify by going to the piano and singing three songs one after another. The third was a signal for departure, and while Montgomery vowed under his breath that it was quite enough to have to listen to Beaumont during business hours, Dick tried to awaken Hayes. He had fallen fast asleep. Their kind host said that he would put him up for the night, but the mummers thought they would be able to get him home. So, bidding the kindest of farewells to their host, whom they hoped they would see the following evening at the theatre, they stumbled into the street, pushing and carrying the drunken man between them. It was very hard to get Hayes along; every ten or a dozen yards he would insist on stopping in the middle of the roadway to argue the value and the sincerity of the friendship his comrades bore for him. Mortimer strove to pacify him,