"Ach! Plazes! So you do!" Moselle stopped short and looked at Mavering under overhanging, yellowish eyebrows. "Am I intruding--roping in your domestic circle, Shack?" "I think likely. It's no circle. It's an incommensurable ratio. You know that." "I know no more than you like, Shack," said Moselle, gently. "You haf no objections?" "None at all." "Vell," said Moselle, after a pause, "so it is." "Mr. Windham," said Mavering, flowingly, "nature cast me for the part of the villain. She gave me the countenance of one reflecting darkness, a voice unfit for lighter remarks than 'I will be revenged!'--made me a lean and hungry Cassius, and bid me assassinate and betray. The inspired text has it that 'All the world's a stage.' It follows that every man is cast for a rôle, and if he tries to introduce anything not in character he appears to make a mess of it, the management docks his salary, and the public blights his career. I once tried to play a hero and a lover, and invited the conjunction of happy stars. It was no good. The notion of it, as you see, is causing this German monster to make a braying ass of himself." "Ho! Ho!" Moselle chuckled, and puffed. "Der _kleiner_ don' know your stage und your Shakespeare. He shtare like a house afire." "Oh, that's it." "Vat is dat, Shack, a house afire? An idiom extravagant, confusing." "It means he stares with breathless expectancy, with bewilderment and fear. I don't recommend the figure to your use. The conception of red conflagration and fire-bells is a Shakespearean flight, and you can't handle combination figures. You stick to a simple retail line of business for cash or you'll bust. You can't take risks and thirty days' credit for a meaning. The English language has no confidence in you. You aren't sound for the market. Mr. Windham, you will probably meet in Hamilton a Mrs. Mavering, who lives close by Saint Mary's, and who will say nothing whatever of me. If I were you I would cultivate her acquaintance, but imitate that particular reserve." "Vell," said Moselle, gently, "das iss good, but don't fill de _kleiner_ mit bevilderment. He don' understand, und he take indigestion. Go buy de grocery und de beer, Shack, und ve make a dinner here, und to-morrow de _kleiner_ shall haf human clothes, und go to the theatre und see friend Shack arrested for his vickedness in de fif' act." After a while the dusk began falling. When Mavering came back with bundles and a basket containing a hot shoulder of meat from the baker's, the long room was lit glimmeringly by a lamp or two. And Moselle declared finally, and referred especially to the beer and seasoned cheese, that he was in favor of the animal half of man. "He develope his soul too fast. Let him vait, let him vait. For his shtomach und feet haf stood by him, his friends from old, so old, und maybe his soul don' do so. She act frisky, _hein_?"