"I have just done," said the little girl. "The piano was so terribly out of tune, I could not resist the temptation."
Miss Blake, who never listened to what any one said, took it for granted that the little girl was the tuner for whom M. le Proprietaire had promised to send; and having bestowed upon her a condescending nod, passed out into the garden, where she told some of the visitors that the piano had been tuned at last, and that the tuner was a young woman of rather eccentric appearance.
"Really it is quite abominable how women thrust themselves into every profession," she remarked in her masculine voice. "It is so unfeminine, so unseemly."
There was nothing of the feminine about Miss Blake: her horse-cloth dress, her waistcoat and high collar, and her billy-cock hat were of the masculine genus; even her nerves could not be called feminine, since we learn from two or three doctors (taken off their guard) that nerves are neither feminine nor masculine, but common.
"I should like to see this tuner," said one of the tennis players, leaning against a tree.
"Here she comes," said Miss Blake, as the little girl was seen sauntering, into the garden.
The men put up their eye-glasses, and saw a little lady with a childish face and soft brown hair, of strictly feminine appearance and bearing. The goat came toward her and began nibbling at her frock. She seemed to understand the manner of goats, and played with him to his heart's content. One of the tennis players, Oswald Everard by name, strolled down to the bank where she was having her frolic.
"Good afternoon," he said, raising his cap. "I hope the goat is not worrying you. Poor little fellow! This is his last day of play. He is to be killed to-morrow for table d'hôte."
"What a shame!" she said. "Fancy to be killed, and then grumbled at!"
"That is precisely what we do here," he said, laughing. "We grumble at everything we eat. And I own to being one of the grumpiest; though the lady in the horse-cloth dress yonder follows close upon my heels."