“It isn’t very customary in the nineteenth century,” said Mrs. Brinkley.  “But you might kiss her fan.  He might kiss her fan, mightn’t he, Mrs. Pasmer?”

“Certainly.  Alice, hold out your fan instantly.”

The girl humoured the joke, laughing.

Trevor pressed his lips to the perfumed sticks.  “I will tell Mrs. Trevor,” he said, “and that will decide her.”

“It will decide her not to come here at all next year if you tell her all.”

“He never tells me all,” said Mrs. Trevor, catching so much of the talk as she came in from some hospitable cares in the dining-room.  “They’re incapable of it.  What has he been doing now?”

“Nothing.  Or I will tell you when we are alone, Mrs. Trevor,” said Mrs. Brinkley, with burlesque sympathy.  “We oughtn’t to have a scene on both sides of the foot-lights.”

A boyish face, all excitement, was thrust out between the curtains forming the proscenium of the little theatre.  “All ready, Mrs. Trevor?”

“Yes, all ready, Jim.”

He dashed the curtains apart, and marred the effect of his own disappearance from the scene by tripping over the long legs of Jove, stretched out to the front, where he sat on Mrs. Trevor’s richest rug, propped with sofa cushions on either hand.

“So perish all the impious race of titans, enemies of the gods!” said Mavering solemnly, as the boy fell sprawling.  “Pick the earth-born giant up, Vulcan, my son.”

The boy was very small for his age; every one saw that the accident had not been premeditated, and when Vulcan appeared, with an exaggerated limp, and carried the boy off, a burst of laughter went up from the company.

It did not matter what the play was to have been after that; it all turned upon the accident.  Juno came on, and began to reproach Jupiter for his carelessness.  “I’ve sent Mercury upstairs for the aynica; but he says it’s no use:  that boy won’t be able to pass ball for a week.  How often have I told you not to sit with your feet out that way!  I knew you’d hurt somebody.”

“I didn’t have my feet out,” retorted Jupiter.  “Besides,” he added, with dignity, and a burlesque of marital special pleading which every wife and husband recognised, “I always sit with my feet out so, and I always will, so long as I’ve the spirit of a god.”

“Isn’t he delicious?” buzzed Mrs. Pasmer, leaning backward to whisper to Mrs. Brinkley; it was not that she thought what Dan had just said was so very fanny, but people are immoderately applausive of amateur dramatics, and she was feeling very fond of the young fellow.

The improvisation went wildly and adventurously on, and the curtains dropped together amidst the facile acclaim of the audience: 

“It’s very well for Jupiter that he happened to think of the curtain,” said Mrs. Brinkley.  “They couldn’t have kept it up at that level much longer.”

“Oh, do you think so?” softly murmured Mrs. Pasmer.  “It seemed as if they could have kept it up all night if they liked.”