“Did you?” she remarked. “How did you?”
She started and blushed up to her ears.
“How?” she repeated. “Oh, I knew!”
“Perhaps he told you he would,” put in Dame P. “Did he?”
“Aimée,” was the rather irrelevant reply, rather suddenly made, “do you like him?”
“I never judge people,” primly enunciated, “upon first acquaintance. First impressions are rarely to be relied upon.”
“That 's a nice speech,” in her elder sister's most shockingly flippant manner, “and it sounds well, but I have heard it before—thousands of times. People always say it when they want to be specially disagreeable, and would like to cool you down. There is the least grain of Lady Augusta in you, Aimée.”
“And considering that Lady Augusta is the most unpleasant person we know, that is a nice speech,” returned the oracle.
“Oh, well, I only said 'a grain,' and a grain is not much.”
“It is quite enough.”