"In what way?" Rebecca Mary always had thought that she was different and, oh, how she wanted to be like other girls.
"In what way?" he repeated as if it should be as plain to her as it was to him. "Why, other girls—other girls are just nowhere beside you!"
"Oh!" Rebecca Mary was quite willing to be unlike other girls in the way described by his deep drawn breath and flushed face, but she looked at him provokingly and murmured sadly: "That might be taken in two ways."
Before he could tell her that it most certainly could be taken in but one way, Joan pushed through the shrubbery to announce excitedly that Ben had made some ice cold lemonade and if they wanted any they had better run, for Mr. Marshall said he was thirsty from his head to his heels, and Mr. Marshall was six feet three inches tall and the lemonade pitcher wasn't more than eighteen inches. Mr. Marshall had said so. A scant eighteen inches, he had said.
"Mercy, mercy, Joan!" Rebecca Mary caught her hand. "Let's fly!"
And away they dashed by the snapdragons, by the foxgloves and the hollyhocks, by the pool to the rose tangled terrace where the six-foot-three Mr. Marshall waited triumphantly beside the scant eighteen-inch lemonade pitcher.
Frederick Befort waited there, too, and when Rebecca Mary, pink and breathless, murmured something about the roses, he drew her into a fragrant corner to tell her of the wonderful roses which have made Luxembourg famous, for there are roses everywhere, climbing the garden walls, the houses, the battlements and the towers. It made her flush and sigh to hear of the beauty of that rose garlanded city, and suddenly he flushed, too, and began hurriedly to talk of the eight hundred primary schools in which education is compulsory, for education is much thought of in the little duchy. And later, oh, much later, as Rebecca Mary brushed her hair before the mirror, she told her smiling reflection that she never had realized what a fascinating subject education could be.