They are obviously play-acting and enjoying it.
Ask Rita her nationality. She will fix you with eyes utterly devoid of
a twinkle and answer: "I? I am part Scotch terrier, and part Spanish
mongrel, but _mostly_ mermaid!"
Rita goes to the sideboard to cut someone a slice of good-looking pie.
She overhears a reference to the "Candlestick," a little eating place
chiefly remarkable for its vegetables and poetesses.
"If they eat nothing but vegetables no wonder they take to poetry," is
her comment. But still she does not smile. If you giggle, as every
child knows, you spoil the game. They laugh heartily enough and often
enough down in the Village, but they never laugh at the Village
itself,--not because they take it so reverentially, but because they
know how to make believe altogether too well.
Let me whisper here that the most fascinating hour in the "Mouse Trap" is
in the late afternoon, when no one is there, and the ebony hand-maiden in
the big back kitchen is taking the fat, delicious-smelling cakes from the
oven.
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