“Miss Wales, I hope we shall meet again during the summer. I’m going back to France, where they have respectable roads. Good-bye.”
“You’ve got to look out for Betty, mummie,” laughed Babbie, when they were settled again on the coach. “All the high-and-mighty personages just naturally gravitate to her. First there was the senator, and now this grand magnate. Who was he, Betty?”
“He didn’t tell me his name, and I didn’t like to ask.”
“He’s certainly a person of importance,” declared Madeline. “He talks about New York as if he pretty nearly owned it, and did you notice how frantically the inn servants flew around when he appeared?”
“I didn’t fly around when he appeared,” said Babe proudly, and was much amused and elated when Betty repeated what he had said about her.
“I think benevolent adventures are going to turn out to be Betty’s dominant interest,” said Babe, after relating the old gentleman’s interpretation of B. A. “First there were the emigrants and now this old gentleman. I wonder whom you’ll find next to cheer up.”
Betty laughed. “I think that’s a funny kind of a dominant interest for traveling. Why, you can be nice to people just as well when you’re at home.”
“Well, you’re elected to try it a while longer,” declared Babbie, “and see how it works. It’s certainly been amusing so far. The very point about a good dominant interest, you know, is that it’s queer. Anybody can take Gothic architecture or Mary Queen of Scots, but ghosts, tea-rooms, chimney-pots, and benevolent adventures show real originality. Girls, aren’t we having a good time?”
CHAPTER IX
BUYING A DUKE
From the lakes the B. A.’s traveled slowly and merrily to London, where they established themselves at a quiet boarding-house overlooking a pretty square, and plunged into a mad delirium of sight-seeing and shopping.