"Of course, my dear Monsieur High-Muck, you shall all lunch in the court, but the menu shall be better adapted to your more gentle appetites than the one prepared for our departed guests. I am at this moment paying the penalty for my share of the indigestible mess--but then I could not hurt their feelings by refusing--and so I have a queer feeling here"--and he ironed his waistcoat with the flat of his hand, his eyes upraised as if in pain. "But let me think--what shall it be to-day? I have a fish which Mignon, who has just gone to the market, will bring back, because I could not go myself nor spare Leà. Those big-eating people came so early and stayed so late. After the fish we will have Poulet Vallèe D'auge, with stewed celery, and at last a Pêche Flambée--and it will be the last time, for the late peaches are about over. And now about the wine--will you pick it out or shall I? Ah!--I remember--only yesterday I found a few bottles of Moncontour Vouvray at the bottom of a shelf in my old wine-cellar. It will bring fresh courage to your hearts. When it does not do that, and you have only dull despair or thick headaches, it should be poured out on the ground"--having delivered which homily, the old man, with his eye on Coco asleep on his perch, sauntered slowly up the court in the direction of the wine-cellar, from which he emerged a few minutes later bearing two dust-encrusted bottles topped with yellow wax--a distinguishing mark which he himself had placed there some twenty years before and had forgotten. So while Herbert read on, only looking up now and then from his book, Leà and I set the table, stripping it of its rough, heavy dishes, swabbing it off with a clean, water-soaked towel--I did the swabbing and Leà held the basin--bringing from the Marmouset our linen and china, then dragging up the big wooden chairs, which were rain-proof and never housed. We missed Mignon, of course. Buying a fish, and the market but half a dozen blocks away, should not require a whole hour for its completion, especially since she had been told to hurry--more especially still, since Pierre's pot was on the boil awaiting its arrival, Louis and Brierley having returned hungry as bears. Indeed I had already started in to ask Lemois the plump question as to what detained our Bunch of Roses, when Leà's thin, sharp, fingers clutched my coat-sleeve, her eyes on Lemois. What she meant I dared not ask, but there was no doubt in my mind that it had to do with the love affair in which every man of us was mixed up as coconspirator--a conclusion which was instantly confirmed when I looked into her shrivelled face and caught the joyous, lantern flare behind her eyes. Waiting until we were out of hearing, Lemois having gone to the kitchen, she answered with a shake of her old head: "Mignon loiters because Gaston is well again."