"I don't like your frock," he said suddenly, speaking with difficulty, for his mother's sweets were sticky. "You're too dark for blue. Makes you look yellow."
"Well, upon my word!" The girl was full of innocent airs and graces; little affectations blossomed all over her, and perhaps they were only the blossom of future graces. But somehow, this odd reporter person, as she called him to her mother, clutched at these premature flowerets like a black frost, and she found herself being as natural as a little boy with him.
"You are polite," she remarked.
He smiled from ear to ear.
"No, I'm not. I'm very rude, but it's true. You ought to wear green and brown, or yellow or white. Imagine a buttercup dressed in blue serge!"
Everyone likes to talk about himself or herself, so for a moment Grisel enjoyed herself thoroughly, as they gravely discussed the different kinds of flowers that she might be said to resemble. Then he invited her to go to the play, and when she refused demurely, he chuckled with delight.
"Oh, now you think I'm the ignorant young man," he retorted. "You think I don't know that you couldn't go with me alone. (Of course, so far as that's concerned you could—all the smart girls, dukes' and earls' daughters, do)—but I have not invited you to. My mother's coming with us."
"Your mother?"
"Yes. Naturally she's anxious to meet you."
She looked at him innocently, her eyes like black-heart cherries with the sun on them.