“Ludmilla Schnetterling, the Little Butterfly they call her. Foreign on both sides apparently,” said Gerald. “Those dainty ankles never were bred on English clods.”
“I wonder what her mother is,” said Mrs. Grinstead.
“By the bye, I think it must have been her mother that I saw that morning when little Felix dragged me to a cigar-shop in quest of an ornamental crab—a handsome, slatternly hag sort of woman, who might have been on the stage,” said Lance.
“Sells fishing-tackle, twine, all sorts,” came from Adrian.
“Have you been there?” asked his sister, rather disturbed.
“Of course! All the fellows go! It is the jolliest place for”—he paused a moment—“candies and ginger-beer.”
“I should have thought there were nicer places!” sighed Anna.
“You have yet to learn that there is a period of life when it is a joy to slip out of as much civilization as possible,” said Lance, putting his sentence in involved form so as to be the less understood by the boys.
“Did you say that Flight had got hold of them?” asked Clement.
“Hardly. They are R.C.‘s, it seems; and as to the Mother Butterfly, I should think there was not much to get hold of in her; but Mrs. Henderson takes interest in her marble-workers, and the girl is the sort of refined, impressible creature that one longs to save, if possible. To-morrow I am going to put you all through your parts, Master Gerald, so don’t you be out of the way.”