"Very."
"And severe-looking? You said she was like you."
"Well, so she is; and yet I suppose our expressions are dissimilar. Look here," says Geoffrey, suddenly, as though compelled at the last moment to give her a hint of what is coming. "I want to tell you about her,—my mother I mean: she is all right, you know, in every way, and very charming in general, but just at first one might imagine her a little difficult!"
"What's that?" asked Mona. "Don't speak of your mother as if she were a chromatic scale."
"I mean she seems a trifle cold, unfriendly, and—er—that," says Geoffrey. "Perhaps it would be a wise thing for you to make up your mind what you will say to her on first meeting her. She will come up to you, you know, and give you her hand like this," taking hers, "and——"
"Yes, I know," said Mona, eagerly interrupting him. "And then she will put her arms round me, and kiss me just like this," suiting the action to the word.
"Like that? Not a bit of it," says Geoffrey, who had given her two kisses for her one: "you mustn't expect it. She isn't in the least like that. She will meet you probably as though she saw you yesterday, and say, 'How d'ye do? I'm afraid you have had a very long and cold drive.' And then you will say——"
A pause.
"Yes, I shall say——" anxiously.
"You—will—say——" Here he breaks down ignominiously, and confesses by his inability to proceed that he doesn't in the least know what it is she can say.