Page:The City of Masks (1918).djvu/69

Rh a musty, dingy place crowded with intellectual rubbish and a lapse of Time.

Mirabeau, in response to a shout from the fat Irish-woman who came in by the day to cook, wash and clean up for the tenants, strode briskly into the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel. He was a tall, spare old man with uncommonly bright eyes and a long grey beard.

His joy on beholding the young guest at their board was surpassed only by the dejection communicated to his sensitive understanding by the dismal expression on the faces of J. Bramble and Thomas Trotter.

He broke off in the middle of a sentence, and, still grasping the hand of the guest, allowed his gaze to dart from one to the other.

"Mon dieu!" he exclaimed, swiftly altering his tone to one of the deepest concern. "What has happened? Has some one died? Don't tell me it is your grandfather, my boy. Don't tell me that the old villain has died at last and you will have to go back and step into his misguided boots. Nothing else can—"

"Worse than that," interrupted Trotter, smiling. "I've lost my situation."

M. Mirabeau heaved a sigh of relief. "Ah! My heart beats again. Still," with a vastly different sigh, "he cannot go on living for ever. The time is bound to come when you—"

An admonitory cough from Mr. Bramble, and a significant jerk of the head in the direction of the kitchen-range, which was almost completely obscured by the person of Mrs. O'Leary, caused M. Mirabeau to bring his remarks to an abrupt close.

When he was twenty-five years younger. Monsieur