“As soon as I can get my affairs in shape—I could leave to-morrow, if I had to. Probably I shall be off in a week or ten days.”
“I suppose the government didn’t say anything about my investigating something, too?”
“Now you mention it, I do not recollect that the subject came up.”
She shook her head reprovingly, “That was an omission! However, I think I’ll go as your secretary.”
Mr. Cameron smiled across the table. How pretty she was, how daintily arch in her sweetness! “That arrangement would be entirely satisfactory to me, my dear, but I am not taking a secretary. I shall get one over there, when I need one.”
“But what can I go as?” pursued the girl. “I’d like to go as something.”
Heavens! she looked as though she meant it! “I’m afraid you can’t go, Lot, this time.”
She lifted cajoling eyes. “But I want to. Oh, I know! I can go to school in Paris.”
Her little air of having settled the matter 6 left him smiling but serious. “France has mouths enough to feed without one extra school-girl’s, chicken.”