mouth to the consistency of sugary water. His coffee cup had a large flattened bowl, and pouring in the ropy cream with his free hand he lifted the silver cover of a dish set before him. It held spitted chicken livers and bacon and gave out an irresistible odor. There were, too, potatoes chopped fine with peppers and browned; and hot delicately sweetened buns. He emptied two full spits, renewed his coffee and finished the potatoes.
With a butter ball at the center of a bun he casually glanced at the day's paper. The submarines, he saw, were operating farther south. A small passenger steamer, the Veronica had been torpedoed outside the Delaware Capes.
A step sounded in the hall, and Louise entered the dining room, clad all in white with the exception of a closely fitting yellow hat. After a moment Victorine, a girl small for her age, with a petulant satiated expression, followed.
"It's a shame," Louise observed, "that with Morice and his wife in the cottage you have to breakfast alone. I suppose all those theatrical people get up at noon."
"Not quite," Rosalie told her from the doorway.
Louise made no reply other than elevating her brows. Victorine looked at the other with an exact mirroring of her mother's disdain.
"Good morning," Morice said indistinctly, hooking the collar of his uniform. "It's a bloody nuisance," he asserted. "Why can't they copy the English jacket?"
"It is much better looking," Louise added.
"Well," Rosalie proclaimed, "I'm glad to see Morice in any; even if it means nothing more than a desk in the Quartermaster's Department."
