"I don't think there is anything else I can tell you," continues Dulce, with a little nod.
"I wonder you have her," says Miss Vibart, disagreeably impressed by this description.
"Why, she is our cousin! And, of course, she can come whenever she wishes—she knows that," says Dulce. "It is not with her, as with you, you know. You are a joy, she is a duty. But the children are so sweet."
"How many of them?" asks Portia, who knows a few things she prefers to children.
"Three. Pussy, Jacky, and the Boodie. The Boodie is nothing short of perfection."
"That is the one solitary point on which Dulce and I agree," says Roger. "We both adore the Boodie. Wait till you see her; she is all gold hair, and blue eyes, and creamy skin, and her nose is a fortune in itself. I can't think where Julia found her."
"Fabian is so fond of her," says Dulce, whose thoughts never wander very far from the brother for whose ruined life she grieves incessantly, day after day.
"How old is she?" asks Portia—"this little beauty you speak of—this harmony in blue and gold?"
"Five, I think. She is not in the least like her mother, who goes in for æsthetics, with a face like a French doll, and who will love you forever, if you will only tell a lie, and say you think she resembles Ellen Terry."
"With a soul given entirely to French bonnets and Louis Quinze shoes, she would be thought ultra-mundane," says Sir Mark, who is trying to make Dulce's little toy terrier, Gilly, stand on his hind legs, in search of cake.