“Have you got any tea?”
Marjorie nodded her head towards a table at the side of the room. “They brought it up about an hour ago,” she said. “It’s quite cold—will you ring for some more?”
“No, thanks,” he answered, as he got up and helped himself. “This will do very well. I am not really thirsty, because, as I said, I have been drinking during the whole of the afternoon—more or less. But I never feel absolutely sociable unless I am either smoking or drinking. Have you got much more to do for the estimable one?”
“Oh, no, only a few words. It was a shorter bit than usual, and I expected to have got it finished ever so long ago. But when it came to doing it, there were a lot of words that I’d never seen before. I know the French for a plate, or a glass, or a horse, or a hat, or anything like that. But I always have to look up words like buttercup or gridiron. Now here’s a word of that kind. What’s the French for beetle?”
“Escarbot, I believe, but I wouldn’t swear to it.”
“Look here, Maurice,” Marjorie said very earnestly, leaning her pretty little chin on one hand, “I’ll tell you what I’ve noticed. When a thing’s different in one way, it’s always different in another. If a piece for translation is extra short, there are always more words to look up. If I have an awfully bad morning, and Miss Dean is savage, and Aunt Julia patronises me, and Miss Matthieson makes me kiss her—bah!—I’m always glad at the end of it, because I know I am going to have a specially good afternoon or evening.”
“Marjorie, I believe you’re right. You’ll have a bad morning to-morrow if that wretched piece about the gridirons and beetles isn’t done for the inestimable Dean.”
“Well, I’ll finish in less than two minutes. Play something while I’m doing it.”
He opened the piano and took down the first piece that came. It was a drawing-room piece, and had the entire absence of soul which always appealed to the corresponding vacuum in the chilly Miss Dean. It was moderately difficult, and sounded very difficult. Miss Dean well knew that when a girl like Marjorie, not yet fifteen, played that piece properly, it would be acknowledged to reflect great credit on her teacher. Maurice Grey opened the piece, looked at it suspiciously, skipped the introduction, played a few bars from the first page, glanced at the fifth page, then shut it up, and put it back again on the top of the piano with a sigh.
“I hate that too,” said Marjorie. “Play the thing you played to them last night in the drawing-room.”