After some desultory talk about other features of the fete, they got out a pile of music, went together to the piano, where Marise tried the effects of various combinations, and finally decided on a desirable one. All this time M. Vallery and Eugenia spent on the balcony, leaning over the railing, the sound of their voices and occasional laughter coming in pleasantly through the open windows. They came in together, when Mme. Vallery summoned them to share the Muscat and hard sweet biscuits which it was part of her genre to serve at four o'clock instead of the newly introduced tea. "Business is over," she announced, settling herself in the chair back of the little stand, where the tray stood. "Now for some talk." She put her hand to the crystal carafe and held it there for a moment. Another of the ecclesiastical details of her appearance was the beauty of her hands, white and shapely. M. Vallery seated the girls and then himself, smiling into his beautiful, glistening brown beard. Eugenia too was smiling, with a dazzled look of pleasure. Mme. Vallery looked down at the wine she was pouring. Marise suppressed a qualm of distaste for M. Vallery, and started the talk by laughing outright as at a sudden recollection of something comic. She explained that she had just had a letter from America, from an old cousin of her father, who always kept her au courant of the quaint and humorous goings-on of the country-side. "Her letters are as good as a comic paper," said Marise, sipping her wine. "Translatable?" asked M. Vallery, "most of the comic things that happen in the French country-side aren't. But they're very funny for all of that." He laughed reminiscently and stroked his beard. Memories of Jeanne and Isabelle, and what they considered comic stories rose blackly to Marise's mind. She turned a gay, laughing face to M. Vallery and translated for his benefit Aunt Hetty's latest story about what happened when a skunk got into the hen-house, and she and Agnes went to the rescue at midnight in their night-gowns and night-caps. It was as much to drown out what was going on inside her own mind, as to amuse the others that she did her liveliest best by the story, telling it with the gusto and brio which made her a favorite with people who liked youthful high spirits. It was broad farce, nothing else, and she did not draw back from the farcical color it needed to carry it off. It was a story, she told herself, that either made people laugh _aux eclats_, or it was a failure. Her audience was certainly laughing _aux eclats_ when she finished the account of the homeric night-battle, laughing and wiping their eyes. "That reminds me," said M. Vallery, his eyes glistening with mirth, "of a story about a love-sick dog that my uncle used to have."