"We are all dust," returned the Duchess, who was whispering to Joyselle about the Grand Duchess Anastasia-Katherine, dans le temps. "Oh, no, we are all worms, aren't we?"
"Positively, I never saw such very inferior coals," went on the Vicar, wondering what on earth she was talking about.
Brigit looked at him as he babbled on. He was a very thin man, who always reminded her of a plucked bird. Soon he would ask her why he had not had the pleasure of seeing her in church for so long. He would hope that she had not had a cold.
He did both these things, poor man, for it was his rôle in life always to say and do the perniciously obvious.
It was a very trying hour, but at last, under the dutiful pretext of going to look after her mother, Brigit escaped and flew to Tommy's room.
It was a strange apartment for a little boy, for it had been assigned to him once when he was ill, as being sunny, and beyond his brass bedstead and small boy hoards, contained nothing whatever that looked as if it belonged to one of few years.
For it was hung in faded plum-coloured satin, the eighteenth-century furniture was quaint and beautiful, and the narrow oval mirrors, set in tarnished gilded frames like a frieze about its walls, presented to Brigit's eye as she opened the door an infinite and bewildering number of Tommies, bending studiously over a large sheet of writing-paper, that he held on a book on his knees.
"Hello, Tommy, what are you up to?"
The boy looked up, his face full of ecstasy. "I say, Bick, he will! He will help me learn to be a violinist! He's going to find a good teacher for me, and then, when I have got over the first grind, you know, he's going—oh, Bicky, darling—he's going to teach me himself, at the same time. Isn't he an angel!"
She sat down. "Yes, Tommy. But what on earth are you writing?"