"Yes--I'm hungry for both, and some of those funny little cakes." "Come back where the fire is, dear; the tea has just been brought. There, take the big chair." "It always feels like you--like your arms, Muetterchen--and I am tired." "And throw off that coat. There's the lemon, if you're afraid of cream." "I wish I weren't afraid of anything but cream." "You told me you weren't afraid of that--that cad--any more." "I'm not--I just told him so. But I'm afraid of it all; I'm tired trying not to drift--tired trying not to try, and tired trying to try--Oh, dear--sounds like a nonsense verse, doesn't it? Have you any one to-night? No? I think I must stay with you till morning. Send some one home to say I'll be here. I can always think so much better here--and you, dear old thing, to mother me!" "Do, child; I'll send Sandon directly." "He will go to the house of mourning." "What's the latest?" "Papa was on the verge of collapse this morning, and yet he was striving so bravely and nobly to bear up. No one knows what that man suffers; it makes him gloomy all the time about everything. Just before I left, he was saying that, when one considers the number of American homes in which a green salad is never served, one must be appalled. Are you appalled, auntie? But that isn't it." "Nothing has happened?" "Well, there'll be no sensation about it in the papers to-morrow, but a very dreadful thing has happened. Papa has suffered one of the cruellest blows of his life. I fancy he didn't sleep at all last night, and he looked thoroughly bowled over this morning." "But what is it?" "Well--oh, it's awful!--first of all there were six dozen of early-bottled, 1875 Chateau Lafitte--that was the bitterest--but he had to see the rest go, too--Chateau Margeaux of '80--some terribly ancient port and Madeira--the dryest kind of sherry--a lot of fine, full clarets of '77 and '78--oh, you can't know how agonising it was to him--I've heard them so often I know them all myself." "But what on earth about them?" "Nothing, only the Cosmopolitan Club's wine cellar--auctioned off, you know. For over a year papa has looked forward to it. He knew every bottle of wine in it. He could recite the list without looking at it. Sometimes he sounded like a French lesson--and he's been under a fearful strain ever since the announcement was made. Well, the great day came yesterday, and poor pater simply couldn't bid in a single drop. It needed ready money, you know. And he had hoped so cheerfully all the time to do something. It broke his heart, I'm sure, to see that Chateau Lafitte go--and only imagine, it was bid in by the butler of that odious Higbee. You should have heard papa rail about the vulgar _nouveaux riches_ when he came home--he talked quite like an anarchist. But by to-night he'll be blaming me for his misfortunes. That's why I chose to stay here with you." "Poor Horace. Whatever are you going to do?"