“He was an American, was he not, and your enemy?” she inquired.
“He was the enemy of one of our foolish kings,” said Aunt Bella, “but an Englishman, and one we are all proud of. And that’s Cobden.” She completed her educational round with the third large engraving that hung near the window.
“And now, perhaps,” said Giles, “you’ll like to hear what they all did and why Aunt Bella has them hanging here. By the time you do that you’ll have quite a good idea of modern English history.”
Alix for a moment was afraid that Aunt Bella might really be going to instruct her, and she had not the least wish to know anything about any of the respectable gentlemen who presided over the breakfast-table.
But Giles was going on, with his bantering smile. “If you go to Aunt Bella, you’ll get a one-sided impression, perhaps. She’s a great Liberal. We are all Liberals in my family. What you’d call Republicans.—Aunt Bella, you’re not asking this helpless French child to drink tea for her breakfast!”
“Doesn’t she have tea?” Aunt Bella asked, and though Alix insisted that she did not mind it at all, there was much concerned conversation, and the elderly maid was summoned and told to ask cook to make some cocoa for the young lady.
“You hate tea, I suppose,” said Giles, and Alix replied that she liked it very much at five o’clock, and Giles went on: “Whereas Aunt Bella likes it at all hours of the day and night; and Indian tea, I’m grieved to say; it’s the only rift within our lute, Aunt Bella’s Indian tea;—since we do agree about Gladstone. Now you’re a Royalist, I suppose, Alix?”
“But surely no rational person in France is a Royalist any longer,” said Aunt Bella.
“Grand-père did not love the Republic,” said Alix, “but Maman admires Napoleon and the Revolution.”
“I sometimes think we shall get both a revolution and a Napoleon in this country,” said Aunt Bella, “at the rate things seem to be going.”