"Can't speak a word of any language but my own—except a hotch potch of French. The little Latin I ever had is practically gone."
"What a pity! Are you good at mathematics?"
"I generally add up on my fingers. Never could remember the multiplication table."
"History, then? Could you help a friend of mine who's writing a novel on the fifteenth century?"
"All I know about the fifteenth century, that I can think of at this moment, is that it wasn't the fourteenth—or the sixteenth. Oh, I'm afraid I'm no good, after all, Miss Dearmer. You'll have to give me up as a bad job, and chuck me into gaol for the theft of Cremer's play. I've never had any proper education."
"Haven't you? I'm not so sure about that," said Lesley, with an inflection in her voice that Val couldn't quite understand. "And I'm not sure you haven't learnt your lesson rather well."
"Which one?" enquired Loveland, ruefully; but she could not have understood the question, for she went on talking as if it had not been asked.
"You must be able to do something," she said, her dimples well in control.
"You've seen that I can't act, but—well, I can shoot pretty straight."
"Ah, I don't know anyone who keeps a shooting gallery."