“Bon soir, mademoiselle. Dîner est servi.”
“It is well.... How does your little granddaughter carry herself?”
“Very well, mademoiselle. Even now she is in the kitchen and very impatient to visit you and Monsieur Ken.”
“She must dine weeth us, mus’ she not, cher ami?”
“Of course. Set a place for her, Arlette. And tell her we shall have some American cakes that I got at the commissary store.”
Arlette beamed with pride and satisfaction and padded about, setting a third place at the table, waggling her head and whispering to herself as she went. Ken and Andree seated themselves, and then Arlette appeared in the door with little Arlette concealed among her skirts. The tiny head, with its birdlike features, peeped out at them timorously.
“Enter, mademoiselle,” said Andree. “See, she has eyes only for Monsieur Ken, is it not? She is my rival.... I shall not dine weeth her. She is ver’ bad and wicked.”
Arlette pushed her granddaughter ahead of her, muttering to her in French.
“Bon soir, monsieur. Bon soir, mademoiselle,” she said in a tiny voice.
“Arlette!” prompted her grandmother, and set her head on one side and made her eyes very large and round while she awaited the result of her prompting. Little Arlette looked at her grandmother, then at Ken and Andree in turn, and said, with the most comical manner of pride in achievement, “Goo’-by, gent’men.”