“In a boat, on the water?”
“No; sitting on an old, overturned boat under the broken sea-wall, side by side, with an open book before them, both their hands on the covers, both faces bent over the same page.”
“God bless the child! She was trying to teach the lad!” ejaculated Marcel, with a smile of sympathetic pleasure in his eyes.
“I say it is most improper! most indecorous! most objectionable! for the little Countess Maria to be sitting down on an old boat side by side with a low, vulgar, ill-bred fisher-boy!” exclaimed Miss Grip.
“Stop, stop, my dear lady! You go too far, indeed! David Lindsay is a poor fisher lad, certainly; but he is not, in any sense of the words, low, vulgar, or ill-bred.”
“Now, how can he be anything else?”
“By intuition. He has the intuitions of a little gentleman.”
“And now, since you talk like that, I am more determined than ever that the child shall go to school,” said Miss Grip.
“It is of no earthly use for you to persist in saying so, Aunt Agrippina. I cannot part with little Glo’. She is the sunshine of my home—the light of my life! Besides, she loves me so that she could not bear to leave me. The separation would grieve her to death.”
“Fiddle!” scornfully repeated Miss Grip.