Anne lifted her brows, but her eyes sparkled mischief.
"Oh, Morgan, I can dance with you any time," she assured him. "You're just kin-folks. Is it because you're 'jolly well fed up' with foreigners that you like to ape English slang?"
The young man blushed hotly, but he chose to ignore the question with which she had capped her response. Inasmuch as it was a fair hit, he had need to ignore it, but his eyes snapped with furious indignation. "Anne, I don't understand you," he announced in a carefully schooled voice. "You can play with absurd little dignitaries, or with mountain illiterates—anything abnormal—but for your own blood—" He paused there a moment, searching his abundant and sophomoric vocabulary for the exact combination of withering words; and, while he hesitated, she interrupted in a tone which was both quiet and ominous:
"Let's take up one thing at a time, Morgan. Just who is the illiterate in the mountains?"
"You know as well as I do—Boone Wellver."
"Boone Wellver. I thought so. At all events, he's a man, even if he's not quite twenty-one yet."
"A man: that is to say, a specimen of the genus homo. So is the fellow that brought in the eggs just now. So is the chap that drives the taxi." The young aristocrat shrugged his shoulders and snapped his fingers in excellent imitation of Gallic expressiveness; then as Anne's twinkle reminded him of his being "jolly well fed up with foreigners," the change in his tone became as abrupt as the break in a boy's altering voice, and he added: "The point is that he's hardly a gentleman. I commend his ambition—but there's something in birth as well. Unless you attach some importance to the elegances and nuances of life, you are only a member of the mob."
"The elegances of life—as, for instance"—the dancing sparkle stole mischievously back into the blue eyes and the voice took on a purring softness—"as, for instance, the handling of the small sword—or fencing foil?"
Morgan rose petulantly from the table and pushed back his chair. "If you ladies will excuse me," he announced with superdignity, "I will leave you for a while to your own devices."
Anne's laughter pursued him in exit with an echo of musical mockery.