"Of course I have lessons," replied Belle with dignity, feeling rather hurt at his tone. "I learn French, and drawing, and music, and dancing, and a great many other things."
"And which do you like best?"
"I don't know. I'm not very fond of history or geography, but mother hopes I'll get on with music. It's so useful to be able to play well, you see, when one comes out. I think I like the dancing lessons most; we learn such delightful fancy steps. Some of us did a skirt dance at the cavalry bazaar last winter, and I was the Queen of the Butterflies. I had a white dress lined with yellow and turquoise, and I shook it out like this when I danced, to show the colours. People clapped ever so much, and it was such a success we had to do it over again, in aid of the hospital. Our mistress wants to get up a flower dance for the exhibition fête next winter, and she promised I should be the Rose Queen, but mother says perhaps I may go to school before then."
"Time you did, too—high time—and to a school where they put something in the girls' heads," remarked the colonel, almost as if he were thinking aloud. "It ought to be history and geography, instead of Bluebells and Rose Queens. I don't approve of capering about on a stage in fancy dress."
Belle was much offended. The conversation had not turned out nearly so interesting as she expected. Instead of being appreciated, she had an uneasy sensation that the old gentleman was making fun of her; and as this was not at all to her taste, she thought it time to beat a retreat; so, noticing the Wrights approaching in the distance, she rose and put up her parasol.
"I see some of my friends," she said, in what she hoped was rather a chilling manner, "and I must go and speak to them."
And to show her displeasure, she marched off without deigning even to say good-bye. Colonel Stewart sat watching her as she walked away, with a somewhat peculiar expression on his face.
"Worse than I could ever have imagined!" he groaned. "Vain, shallow, and empty-headed, caring for nothing but pleasure and showing herself off in public places decked out like a ballet dancer! She's pretty enough in a superficial kind of way—the sort of beauty you get in a doll, with neither mind nor soul behind it. She worthy of the name, indeed! Oh, my poor boy! Is this the child on whom you had set such high hopes? And is this little French fashion-plate really and truly the last of the Stewarts?"