'What do you mean?'
'Why, all these months that you've been away I've had a lot of time to think, and I see what a different thing you have made of life to me by teaching me to understand things. Last year I thought of nothing when I was out on the hills with Ta-ta but childish things—stories and things like that. And now all the while I think of the things that are going on in the great world, the pictures that are being painted, the books that are being written.'
'And the dresses that are being worn?' I suggested playfully, not at all sure that the change she was so proud of was entirely for the better.
'Well, yes, I think I should like to know that too,' she admitted, with a blush.
'And you want to attribute all that to my teaching?'
'Yes, Mr. Maude,' she answered, laughing; 'you must bear the blame of it all.'
'Well, look here; I've re-visited the world since you have, and, believe me, you are much better outside. It's a horrid, over-crowded, noisy place, and, as for the artists in whom you are so much interested, you must worship them from afar if you want to worship them at all. Painters, actors, writers, and the rest—the successful ones are snobs, the unsuccessful—sponges. And as for the dresses, my child, there was never a frock sent out of Bond Street so pretty, so tasteful, or so becoming as the one you have on.'
But Babiole glanced down at her blue serge gown rather disdainfully, and there shone in her eyes, as brightly as ever, that vague hunger of a woman's first youth for emotions and pleasures, which every morning's sunshine seemed to promise her, and whose names she did not know.
'Ah,' she said gaily, 'but everybody doesn't speak like that. I shall wait until your friends come in the summer, and see what they tell me about it.'
My face clouded, and, with the pretty affectionateness with which she now always treated me, she assured me that she did not really want any advice but mine, and that, as long as I was good enough to teach her, she was content to read the lessons of the busy world through my eyes.