‘Well, he had come to be Seigneur of Tintajeux through the inheritance of his Guernsey wife, and to be a proper Seigneur in this country you should be a Reverend. How great-grandpapa got to be ordained I don’t know. Andros, his son, was sent to Winchester and Oxford.’
‘The Seigneur I am about to see?’
‘Yes, and Andros became a fellow of his college. He was one of the three best classics in Oxford. But he stands right away out of my reach.’ Marjorie stretched up her slight arms as though pointing to the inaccessible mental plane occupied by the Reverend Andros. ‘He lives with the gifted people of sixty years ago. For me that is too old.’
‘Rather,’ said Geff, unable, though he would fain stand on his dignity, to repress a smile.
‘Grandpapa is an eighteenth-century man. He was just born early enough to be able to make that his boast. And he has eighteenth-century ideas. “Unless a woman be a Madame de Staël,” says the Seigneur, “let her keep silent. If she be a Madame de Staël, let her keep a thousandfold more silent.” Now I,’ cried small Marjorie, ‘mean to make my voice heard. I want to know nineteenth-century life straight through. I want to learn facts, at first hand. As a matter of lesser moment, I want a degree. Do you think London University would be beyond me?’
‘I must know first,’ answered Geoffrey, ‘to what height of learning you can reach on tiptoes.’
A flash of indignation swept over Marjorie’s face. The possibilities of temper showed round that acute, square-cut mouth of hers.
‘It is correct masculine taste to laugh at a girl’s ambition, I know! The Seigneur, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,—all have the same fine generosity! But why do we lose time? Perhaps, if you will come to the schoolroom, you will look over my books, sir. It is too late, of course, to do any work to-night?’
‘Not too late for me,’ answered Geoffrey, in his heart liking the girl better and better. ‘I came out hoping we should begin to read at once. My time is yours.’