Tams
entered with coffee.
"You'll have coffee, Mr. Batchgrew?" said the hostess.
"Nay, missis! I canna' sleep after it."
Secretly enchanted by the sweet word "missis," Rachel was nevertheless
piqued by this refusal.
"Oh, but you must have some of Louise's coffee," said Louis, standing
negligently in front of the fire.
Already, though under a month old as a husband, Louis, following the
eternal example of good husbands, had acquired the sure belief that
his wife could achieve a higher degree of excellence in certain
affairs than any other wife in the world. He had selected coffee as
Rachel's speciality.
"Louise's?" repeated old Batchgrew, puzzled, in his heavy voice.
Rachel flushed and smiled.
"He calls me Louise, you know," said she.
"Calls you Louise, does he?" Batchgrew muttered indifferently. But he
took a cup of coffee, stirred part of its contents into the saucer
and on to the Chesterfield, and began to sup the remainder with a
prodigious splutter of ingurgitation.
"And you must have a cigarette, too," Louis carelessly insisted. And
Mr. Batchgrew agreed, though it was notorious that he only smoked once
in a blue moon, because all tobacco was apt to be too strong for him.
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