Sally Peters was stirring the buttered egg vigorously, lest it should stand still and burn. Jane Dawn was watching the cocoa, lest it should run over and burn. Arnold wandered round the room peering at the pictures--mostly drawings and etchings--with his near-sighted eyes, to see if there was anything new. Jane had earned a little money lately, so there were two new Duncan Grants and a Muirhead Bone, which he examined with critical approval. “You’ve still got this up,” he remarked, tapping Beardsley’s “Ave Atque Vale” with a disparaging finger. “The one banal thing Beardsley ever.... Besides, anyhow Beardsley’s _passé_.” Jane Dawn, who looked as if she belonged not to time at all, seemed peacefully undisturbed by this fact. Only Sally, in her young ingenuousness, looked a little concerned. “I love the Ave,” Jane murmured over the saucepan, and then looked up at Eddy with her small, half-affectionate smile--a likeable way she had with her. He said, “I do too,” and Arnold snorted. “You don’t know him yet, Jane. He loves everything. He loves ‘Soap-bubbles,’ and ‘The Monarch of the Glen,’ and problem pictures in the Academy. Not to mention ‘The Penitent,’ which, Jane, is a play of which you have never heard, but to which you and I will one day go, to complete our education. Only we won’t take Sally; it would be bad for her. She isn’t old enough for it yet and it might upset her mind; besides, it isn’t proper, I believe.” “I’m sure I don’t want to go,” said Sally, pouring out the egg into a dish. “It must be idiotic. Even Jimmy thinks so.” Arnold’s eyebrows went up. “In that case I may revise my opinion of it,” he murmured. “Well, anyhow Eddy loves it, like everything else. Nothing is beyond the limit of his tolerance.” “Does he like nice things too?” Sally naïvely asked. “Will he like ‘Squibs’?” “Oh, yes, he’ll like ‘Squibs.’ His taste is catholic; he’ll probably be the only person in London who likes both ‘Squibs’ and ‘The Penitent.’ ... I suppose we shan’t see Eileen to-night; she’ll have been given one of the seats of the great. She shall come and talk to us between the acts, though.” “We wanted Eileen and Bridget to come to supper,” said Sally. “It’s quite ready now, by the way; let’s have it. But they were dining with Cecil, and then going on to the theatre. Do you like cocoa, Mr. Oliver? Because if you don’t there’s milk, or lemonade.”