"Oh nothing," I said, a shade guiltily, for I was taken with one of my intuitive panics: Suppose she had guessed my thoughts? But the big eyes were staring at me with nothing beyond vague curiosity. To make amends, I set to and tattled in the liveliest and worldliest fashion I knew.
"Oh how droll you are, and what good times we shall have together."
Dinner (no Supper now: I was a lady!) found me already much more at ease. I corrected some mistake in Mlle. Suzanne's pronunciation, and that set the table going. While Weather is the conversational shield and buckler of the English or of the French against themselves, against each other it is the oddness and madness of the other's tongue.
"Heavens!" cried Suzanne. "That makes five ways I know of to pronounce ough in English. It is mad, absurd."
"There are seven ways at least," I boasted.
"There's nothing like that in our language. French is so simple."
"Oh? What about the irregular verbs?"
"You've got them too, quite as many."
"But they're not so irregular as yours: in fact, most of them aren't really irregular at all!"
"Oh, not really irregular at all! Am, be, is, are: or go, went, been; aren't they irregular enough for you?"