"No, but you talk more," said I.
"How can you judge? What do you know about little girls like me?"
"I don't know anything about little girls like you, because all the rest got broken; but if you'll teach me, I'll do my best to learn."
"The Prince is doing his best too, I guess. I wonder which will learn faster?"
"That depends partly on you. But I should have thought all his time was taken up with your mother."
"Oh my! no. He wants her to think that. But you see, he's got more time than anything else, so he has plenty to spare for me, and Maida too. Do you know what he called us to a friend of his in this hotel? The friend's wife told her maid, and she passed it on to our Agnes, who repeated it to me because we were sending her away. 'Kid, Kidder, Kiddest.' I'm Kiddest, of course; that's easy enough; but it would save the Prince lots of trouble and brain-fag if he only knew which was 'Rich,' which 'Richer,' and which 'Richest.'"
"Heavens!" I ejaculated. "If you have got together all this mass of worldly wisdom at thirteen, what will you have accumulated at twenty?"
"It all depends on when Mamma allows me to be twenty," retorted the little wretch. And what lengths this indecently frank conversation might have reached between us I dare not think, had not an exclamation from Terry cut it short.
"What do you say to that, Countess, and Miss Destrey? Have I won the bet?" he was demanding, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, as he stood to survey his work.
If I had not infinite belief in Terry's true Irish ingenuity, I would have considered the day and the bet both lost before the test had been essayed. But he had justified my faith, and there on the almost obliterated lines of the motor-car, behold a place for everything, and everything in its place.