acted but still grimly firm, stood frowzy
Widow Larken herself, drawn and held to the post of duty by this vast
and unusual emergency. Not one room had Madam Larken saved for all
these alien warblers, not one morsel of food had she loosed from her
capacious kitchen; and yet not one member of the company had she
permitted to stray outside her doors while Signorina Caravaggio and
Signor Ricardo and the Herr Professor Fruehlingsvogel had gone out to
secure an angel, two stout porters being kept at the front door to
turn back the restless. If provision could be made to pay the bills of
this caravan, the Widow Larken--who was shaped like a pillow with a
string tied around it and wore a face like a huge, underdone apple
dumpling--was too good a business woman to overlook that opportunity.
Bobby took one sweeping glance at that advancing circle of one hundred
and forty eyes and turned to Widow Larken.

"I will be responsible for the hotel bills of these people until
further notice," said he.

The Widow Larken, looking intently at Bobby's scarf-pin, relented no
whit in her uncompromising attitude.

"And who might you be?" she demanded, with a calm brow and cold
determination.

"I am Robert J. Burnit," said Bobby. "I'll give you a written order if
you like--or a check."

The Widow Larken's uncompromising expression instantly melted, but she
did not smile--she grinned. Bobby knew precisely the cause of that
amused expression, but if he had needed an interpreter, he had one at
his elbow in the person of Biff Bates, who looked up at him with a
reflection of the same grin.

"They're all next to you, Bobby," he observed. "The whole town knows
that you're the real village goat."

The Widow Larken did not answer Bobby directly. She called back to a
blue-overall-clad porter at the end of the lobby:

"Open the dining-room doors, Michael."

Signorina Caravaggio immediately said a few guttural words in German
to Professor Fruehlingsvogel, a few limpid words in Italian to Signor
Ricardo a few crisp words in French to Madame Villenauve, a nervous
but rather attractive little woman with piercing black eyes. The
singers of other languages did not wait to be informed; they joined
the general stampede toward the ravishing paradise of midday
breakfast, and as the last of them vacated the lobby, the principals
no whit behind the humble members of the chorus in crowding and
jamming through that doorway, Bobby breathed a sigh of relief.