“Il faut baiser la main,” Miss Widgett prompted. Sylvia followed out the suggestion; and the Emperor, to whom Miss Widgett had whispered a few words, said:
“Ah, vous êtes français,” and to Miss Widgett, “Who did you say he was?”
“I really don’t know. He came with Baron von Statten. Comment vous appelez-vous?” Miss Widgett asked, turning to Sylvia.
Sylvia answered that she was called Monsieur Sylvestre, and just then a most unusual squealing was heard in the antechamber.
“Mon dieu! qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?” Sylvia cried.
“C’est le—comment dit-on bagpipes en Français? C’est le ‘baagpeep’ vous savez,” which left Sylvia as wise as she was before. However, as there was no general panic, she ceased to be frightened. Soon she saw Jimmy beckoning to her from the antechamber, and shortly afterward they left the reception, which had interested Sylvia very much, though she regretted that nobody had offered her an ice.
Monkley congratulated Sylvia upon her quickness in grasping that he had wanted her to pretend she was French, and by his praise roused in her the sense of ambition, which, though at present it was nothing more than a desire to please him personally, marked, nevertheless, a step forward in the development of her character; certainly from this moment the old fear of having no one to look after her began to diminish, and though she still viewed with pleasure the prospect of being alone, she began to have a faint conception of making herself indispensable, perceiving dimly the independence that would naturally follow. Meanwhile, however gratifying Monkley’s compliment, it could not compensate her for the ice she had not been given, and Sylvia made this so plain to him that he invited her into a confectioner’s shop on the way home and gave her a larger ice than any she had seen at the Emperor’s.
Ever since Sylvia had made friends with Jimmy Monkley, her father had adopted the attitude of being left out in the cold, which made him the worst kind of audience for an enthusiastic account of the reception. Mrs. Meares, though obviously condescending, was a more satisfactory listener, and she was able to explain to Sylvia some of the things that had puzzled her, among others the old gentleman’s remark about Gaelic.
“This keeping up of old customs and ceremonies in our degenerate days is most commendable,” said Mrs. Meares. “I wish I could be doing more in that line here, but Lillie Road does not lend itself to the antique and picturesque; Mr. Morgan, too, gets so impatient even if Clara only hums at her work that I don’t like to ask that Scotchman to come and play his bagpipes here, though I dare say he should be only too glad to do so for a shilling. No, my dear boy, I don’t mean the gentleman you met at the Emperor’s. There is a poor man who plays in the street round here from time to time and dances a sword dance. But the English have no idea of beauty or freedom. I remember last time I saw him the poor man was being moved on for obstructing the traffic.”
Clara put forward a theory that the reception had been a church treat. There had been a similar affair in her own parish once, in which the leading scholars of the Sunday-school classes had portrayed the kings and queens of England. She herself had been one of the little princes who were smothered in the Tower, and had worn a pair of her mother’s stockings. There had been trouble, she remembered, because the other little prince had been laced up so tightly that he was sick over the pillow that was wanted to stuff out the boy who was representing Henry VIII and could not be used at the last moment.