“Monsieur is served!”

Max, startled out of his reverie, jumped to his feet.

“What is this?  Oh, but you should not!  You should not!”

“And why not, in the name of God?  If you insist upon having antique brass coffee-pots, your neighbors must expect to suffer, eh, Jacqueline?”

The little Jacqueline laughed, shaking her fair head.  “Ah, well, monsieur, it is an art—­the keeping of an establishment—­and must be learned like any other!”

“And you think we ought to go to school?”

“I did not say that!” She laid down the loaf of bread, the butter, and the milk-jug that she was carrying, and took the coffee from Blake’s hands with an air of pretty gravity.  “And now, monsieur, where are the cups?”

Blake turned to Max.  “Cups?” he said in English.  “I know we bought something quite unique in the matter of cups, but where the deuce we put them—­For the love of God and the honor of the family, boy, tell me where they are!”

Max’s eyes were shining.  “They are in the chest, mon cher.  We put them there for safety as we went out last night.”

“Good!  Give me the key.”

“The key, mon ami, I have left at the Hotel Railleux!”

Consternation spread over Blake’s face, then he burst out laughing and turned to Jacqueline, relapsing into French.

“Monsieur Max would have you to know, mademoiselle, that he possesses an altogether unusual and superior set of Oriental china, which he bought from a certain villanous Jew at the corner of the rue Andre de Sarte; that for safety he has locked that china into the artistic and musty dower-chest standing against the wall; and that for greater safety he has forgotten the key in an antique hotel near the Gare du Nord!”

He laughed again; Max laughed; the little Jacqueline laughed, and ran to the door.

“Oh, la! la!  What a pair of children!” She flitted out of the room, returning with two cups, which she set beside the coffee and the milk.

“And now, messieurs, it is possible you can arrange for yourselves!” She shot a bright, quizzical look from one to the other.  “I know you would wish me to stay and measure out the milk and sugar, and it would flatter me to do so, but, unhappily, I have a dish of some importance upon my own fire, and it is necessary that one is domestic when one is only a woman—­is it not so, Monsieur Max?” She wrinkled her pretty face into a grimace of mischief, and nodded as if some idea infinitely amusing, infinitely profound lurked at the back of her blonde head.

“Good-day, Monsieur Edouard.  Good-day, Monsieur Max!”

“Strange little creature!” said Blake, as the door closed upon her.  “Frail as a butterfly, with one capacity to prevent her taking wing!”

“And that capacity—­what is it?” Max had returned to his former position, and was pouring out the coffee as he crouched comfortably by the fire.