"Miss Wharton will be in to supper," M. de Ronville remarked casually. "She is not a young girl," seeing the look of interest in Daffodil's face; "but you will find her a very agreeable companion."
"It's queer, but I don't know many young girls. Some of the older ones were married in the spring, and I have been so much with mother and grandmere and Norah that I'm a little girl, a big little girl, I've grown so much."
Her laugh was a gay ripple of sound. He took it with him to the office and her golden head seemed dancing about everywhere, just as it had at home.
"Of course," Miss Wharton said to herself as she lifted the brass knocker, "de Ronville never could be so foolish as to fall in love with a chit of a thing, though I have heard of men training a young girl just to their fancy. He has always been so discreet and punctilious. French are a little different."
No, he had not overpraised her beauty. Betty Wharton admitted that at once. And her manners had a natural grace, it ran in the French blood. Why it would be a pleasure to take her about and have men stare at her as they would be sure to do.
She and Mrs. Jarvis found enough to talk about, and while the housekeeper had gone to look after the tea she turned her attention to Daffodil.
"Oh, I can't help liking the place," the child said with charming eagerness. "Mrs. Jarvis has been telling me about the stores and the gardens a dozen times prettier than this, though I don't see how that can be. They don't seem to care much about gardens at home, they have a few posy beds, but you can go out and gather basketsful in the woods, only they are not grand like these. And there are no such beautiful houses. Oh, there are lots of log huts, really, the older ones, and people are not—I don't just know what to call it, but they do not seem to care."
"All towns improve after a while. The people in New York think they are much finer than we, and then there is Boston—where the people are starched so stiff with the essence of fine breeding that they can hardly curtsey to one another. I like my town the best, having seen them all."
"Oh, how splendid it must be to go about to strange, beautiful places," the child said wistfully, with glowing eyes.
"But I have not been to France;" laughingly.