“Do you really want to hear?”
“More than anything.”
“And you’ll not lay it up against me?” he badgered.
“On my honor!”
“Then she said: ‘My dear Mr. Grévy, you are, I take it, the grandson of my old friend.’ She put up her lorgnette and looked me over. ‘Yes, you are the living image of him! Ah, your grandfather and I were good friends indeed, at one time, I assure you.’ ‘How I regret,’ I said, ‘that he had two generations the advantage of me.’ The dear little thing let me kiss her hand. ‘You have his turns of speech, also,’ she said. Then she asked: ‘Have you seen my granddaughter, the only child of my dear Jack?’ ‘I am on my way to it,’ I declared. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘we must see to it, we Knoxes and Ravanels, we Bryces and Grévys, that she makes no mistakes, must we not?’ She looked at me again through her lorgnette, appealing apparently to my chivalry. ‘We are a solid phalanx,’ said I, ‘to see that she comes to no harm.’ ‘We understand each other,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Your family never did need superfluous words.’”
I laughed and laughed.
“I have a friend, Mr. Rowantree,” I said, “who likes to tell me about the comedy of manners. Isn’t that what madam grandmother plays all of the time?”
“Just! But isn’t she exquisite? A survival of a splendid old time.”
“Yes. Oh, you can’t think how I admire and love her.”
“Yes, I can. I can very easily think how you do. Shall you confine yourself in your associations, Miss Knox, to the Ravanels and the Grévys? Why not cut out the Ravanels?”