THE GAY COCKADE
oysters and a bottle of cream. I cooked them myself in the white-tiled kitchen, and served them piping hot in a bowl with crackers.
Perry, propped up in bed, ate like a starved bird.
"I've never tasted anything better," he said; and, warmed and fed, he slept after a bit as soundly as a satisfied baby.
It was while he was eating the oysters that Rosalie came to the door and looked at him. He was not an æsthetic object—I must admit that no sick man is—and I saw distaste in her glance, as if some dainty instinct in her shrank from the spectacle.
When I went down I found her sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a Chinese robe of black and gold. You can imagine the effect of that with the red of her hair and the red of her cheeks and lips. Her feet, in black satin slippers, were on a jade-green cushion, and back of her head was the strip of brocade that she had bought with her housekeeping money. It was a gorgeous bit, repeating the color of the cushion, and with a touch of blue which matched her eyes.
She wanted me to show her the rest of the prints. I tried to talk to her of Perry's health, but she wouldn't.
"Don't croak, Jim Crow," she said again.
As I look back at the two of us by the fire that
172
