"Look here, Rosie," Dick began when she paused, with an introspective look which told her that he had not heard a word she said, "there's something I want you to do for me."
"It won't be the first time," she replied pertly. "I 'spect I'll like to do it. But if it's anything important, better begin now, for some of my own specially collected sheep will be drifting in to tea."
"Sheep at tea! A new subject for an artist," mumbled Carleton.
"My special ones are so shorn it would be scarcely decent to paint them, and a few are already quite black. But they all like tea—from my hands. It knits them together in a nice soft woolly way. And St. George will probably stroll in with the Alpine glow of a sermon-in-the-making still lighting up his eyes. And he will be introduced to you and drop crumbs on my lovely Persian rug, and ask to have the gramophone started. He loves it. Often I think our friends must go away and complain of being gramophoned to death by a wild clergyman. So out with what you have to ask me, my dear man, or the enemy will be upon us."
Carleton got up, with his hands in his pockets, and stared out of the window which looked down from a seemingly great height over the turquoise sea. He could see a train from Italy tearing along a curve of the green and golden coast, like a dark knight charging full tilt toward the foe, a white plume swept back from his helmet. Suddenly the smooth blue surface of the sea was broken by the rush of a motor-boat practising for a forthcoming race, a mere buzzing feather of foam, with a sound like the beating of an excited heart, heard after taking some drug to exaggerate the pulsation. Yet Carleton was hardly conscious of what he saw or heard. He was thinking how best to ask Rose Winter to make Miss Grant's acquaintance. Several ways occurred to him, but at last he blurted out something quite different from what he had planned.
"There's a girl—a lady—I—I want to get your opinion about," he stammered, turning red, because he knew that Rose was looking at him with a dangerously innocent expression in her eyes. "That is, I should like to know how you'd classify her," he finished.
Rose answered lightly. "There are just three sorts of women, Boy—counting girls: Perfect Dears, Poor Dears, and Persons. Men of course are still easier to classify, because there are only two kinds of them—nice and horrid. But under which of the three heads would you yourself put your friend? I suppose you think she's a Perfect Dear, or you wouldn't have to go and look out of the window while you lead up to asking if I'll make her acquaintance."
"No," said Dick. "I'm afraid she's rather more like a Poor Dear. That's why I want you to help her."
"Oh, you want me to help her? You're quite sure she isn't a Person?"
"I should think not, indeed!" Dick broke out indignantly. "She's a lady, whatever else she may be."