"He understands himself so well," the professor indulgently smiled.
"It requires no concentration, really," I murmured.
"Ah, Mr. Brutus," Tommy grinned at me over a fork-load of buckwheat cakes, "can it be your cooling blade I feel?"
"It is; and you'll get it in the neck, good and properly, if you don't leave me out of your silly nonsense," I warned.
"Here's a touchy one for you, gezabo! Yachting with royalty the other night made him too good for us."
After a few minutes devoted to breakfast, he asked:
"Are princesses like other people, I wonder? Jack ought to be put wise, so he'll know how to behave when we get her aboard."
"Why, yes, my boy Tommy," Monsieur answered, taking him seriously, of course. "They are the same as other young ladies, except more highly cultured, more of education, more of that—what you call—indefinable chasteness."
"Indefinable chasteness," he puckered his lips and repeated the phrase in a ruminating way. "D'you know, a philosopher once told me that if ever I heard an old lady call a girl anything like that, to put the young one down for a kissable, artful little flirt; for in this present day of ours, he said, woman understands everything on God's green earth—except the mind of her succeeding generation."