"Certainly you are a very good-looking young person!" she conceded at last. "But of such an ungodly name! Is there no way to overcome it?"
"Over—come it?" puzzled Solvei for a single shadowed instant. "Oh, that is most easy," she brightened, almost at once. "Solway it is as though it was. And Ch-Chelland."
"You may call me 'Elizabeth,'" said Mrs. 129Tome Gallien without the flicker of an eyelash.
"E-lee-sa-buth?" repeated the girl painstakingly.
"Oh, I suppose that will do," sighed Mrs. Tome Gallien, struggling up a little bit higher on her pillows. "But whatever in the world made you come?" she demanded tartly.
But if the question was like a dash of cold water, Solvei's reaction to it was at least the reaction of a duck's back.
"You mean you did not really want me?" she preened and fluttered. Her voice was ecstasy, her eyes like stars.
"I certainly did not," sliced Mrs. Tome Gallien's clear incisive voice.
"Oh, of what a joyousness and retribution!" beamed Solvei. "Of what a gloriosity! As the shooting camping is to the sad little lady, and the piano to the Young Doctor,—so thus am I to you! What then shall happen to everyone of us is yet on the lap of the gods! Let us kiss!" she suggested as one prize fighter might proffer his hand to another.
"I am not a kisser, thank you," said Mrs. Tome Gallien with some coldness. 130