"Yo'all sits down," said Lucy firmly, "an' yo'all eats what's on youah plate. Yo'all ain' much fattah nor a jay-bird."

"I don't see why she keeps comparing me to a living skeleton all the time," Val complained as she departed kitchenward.

"She told Letty-Lou yesterday," supplied Ricky through a mouthful of popover, "that you are 'peaked lookin'."

"Why doesn't she start in on Rupert? He needs another ten pounds or so."

Val reached for the b.u.t.ter. "And he hasn't got a very good color, either." Val surveyed his brother professionally. "Doesn't get outdoors enough."

"No," Ricky's voice sounded aggrieved, "he's too busy having secrets--"

"Hmm," Rupert murmured, more interested in his letter than in the conversation.

"The trouble is that we are not Chinese bandits, Malay pirates, or Arab freebooters. We don't possess color, life, enough--enough--"

"Sugar," Rupert interrupted Val, pushing his coffee-cup in the general direction of Ricky without raising his eyes from the page in his hand.

She giggled.

"So that's what we lack. Well, now we know. How much sugar should we have, Rupert? Rupert--Mr. Rupert Ralestone--Mr. Rupert Ralestone of Pirate's Haven!" Her voice grew louder and shriller until he did lay down his reading matter and really looked at them for the first time.

"What do you want?"

"A little attention," answered Ricky sweetly. "We aren't Chinese, Arabs, or Malays, but we are kind of nice to know, aren't we, Val? If you'd only come out of your subconscious, or wherever you are most of the time, you'd find that out without being told."

Rupert laughed and pushed away his letters. "Sorry. I picked up the bad habit of reading at breakfast when I didn't have my table brightened by your presence. I know," he became serious, "that I haven't been much of a family man. But there are reasons--"

"Which, of course, you can not tell _us_," flashed Ricky.

His face lengthened ruefully. He pulled at his tie with an embarra.s.sed frown. "Not yet, anyway. I--" He fumbled with his napkin. "Oh, well, let me see how it comes out first."

Ricky opened her eyes to their widest extent and leaned forward, every inch of her expressing awe. "Rupert, don't tell me that you are an _inventor_!" she cried.

"Now I know that we'll end in the poorhouse," Val observed.

Rupert had recovered his composure. "'I yam what I yam,'" he quoted.

"Very well. Keep it to yourself then," pouted Ricky. "We can have secrets too."

"I don't doubt it." He glanced at Val. "Unfortunately you always tell them. See any more bogies last night, Val? Did a big, black, formless something reach out from under the bed and clutch at you?"

But his brother refused to be drawn. "No, but when it does I'll sic it onto you. A big, black, formless something is just what you need. And I'll--"

"Am I interrupting?" Charity stood in the door. "Goodness! Haven't you finished breakfast yet? Do you people know that it is almost ten?"

"Madam, we have banished time." Rupert drew out the chair at his left.

"Will you favor us with your company?"

"I thought you were going to be busy today," said Ricky as she rang for Letty-Lou and a fresh cup of coffee for their guest.

"So did I," sighed Charity. "And I should be. I've got this order, you know, and now I can't get any models. Why there should be a sudden dearth of them right now, I can't imagine. I thought I could use Jeems again, but somehow he isn't the type." She raised her cup to her lips.

"Are you doing story ill.u.s.trations?" asked Rupert, more alive now than he had been all morning.

"Yes. A historical thriller for a magazine. They want a full-page cut for the first chapter and a half-page to ill.u.s.trate the most exciting scene. Then there're innumerable smaller ones. But the two large ones are what I'm worrying about. I like to get the important stuff finished first, and now I simply can't get models who are the right types."

"What's the story about?" demanded Ricky.

"It's laid in Haiti during the French invasion led by Napoleon's brother-in-law, the one who married Pauline. All voodoo and aristocratic young hero and beautiful maiden pursued by an officer of the black rebels. And," she almost wailed, "here I am with the clothes spread all over my bed--the right costumes, you know--with no one to wear them. I went over to the Corners this morning and called Johnson--he runs a registration office for models--but he couldn't promise me anyone." She bit absent-mindedly into a round spiced roll Ricky had placed before her.

"Wait!" She laid down the roll in a preoccupied fashion and stared across the table. "Val, stand up."

Wondering, he pushed back his chair and arose obediently.

"Turn your head a little more to the right," Charity ordered. "There, that's it! Now try to look as if there were something all ready to spring at you from that corner over there."

For one angry moment he thought that she had been told of what had happened the night before and was baiting him, as the others had done.

But a sidewise glance showed him that her interest lay elsewhere. So he screwed up his features into what he fondly hoped was a grim and deadly smile.

"For goodness sake, don't look as if you had eaten green apples," Ricky shot at him. "Just put on that face you wear when I show you a new hat.

No, not that sneering one; the other."

Rupert threw back his head and laughed heartily. "Better let him alone, Ricky. After all, it's _his_ face."

"I'm glad that someone has pointed out that fact," Val said stiffly, "because--"

"Oh, be quiet!" Charity leaned forward across the table. "Yes," she nodded, "you'll do."

"For what?" Val asked, slightly apprehensive.

"For my hero. Of course your hair is too short and you are rather too youthful, but I can disguise those points. And," she turned upon Ricky, "you can be the lady in distress. Which gives me another idea. Do you suppose that I might use your terrace for a background and have that big chair, the one with the high back?" she asked Rupert.

"You may have anything you want within these walls," he answered lightly enough, but it was clear that he really meant it.

"What am I supposed to do?" Val asked.

Charity considered. "I think I'll try the action one first," she said half to herself. "That's going to be the most difficult. Ricky, will you send one of Lucy's children over with me to help carry back the costumes and my material--" She was already at the door.

"Val and I will go instead," Ricky replied.

Some twenty minutes later Val was handed a suitcase and told to use the contents to cover his back. Having doubts of the wisdom of the whole affair, he went reluctantly upstairs to obey. But the result was not so bad. The broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted coat did not fit him ill, though the shiny boots were at least a size too large. Timidly he went down. Ricky was the first to see him.

"Val! You look like something out of _Lloyds of London_. Rupert, look at Val. Doesn't he look wonderful?"

Having thus made public his embarra.s.sment, she ran to the mirror to finish her own prinking. The high-waisted Empire gown of soft green voile made her appear taller than usual. But she walked with a little shuffle which suggested that her ribbon-strapped slippers fitted her no better than Val's boots did him. Charity was coaxing Ricky's tight fashionable curls into a looser arrangement and tying a green ribbon about them. This done, she turned to survey Val.

"I thought so," she said with satisfaction. "You are just what I want.

But," the tiny lines about her eyes crinkled in amus.e.m.e.nt, "at present you are just a little too perfect. Do you realize that you have just fought off an attack, led by a witch doctor, in which you were wounded; that you have struggled through a jungle for seven hours in order to reach your betrothed; and that you are now facing death by torture? I hardly think that you should look as if you had just stepped out of the tailor's--"

"I've done all that?" Val demanded, somewhat staggered.