“I thought I knew your sex. I was wrong.”
“Oh!” she said again. “Do you mean that I don’t behave as a delicately bred female should?”
“That is one way of putting it, certainly.”
“It is the way Aunt Almeria puts it.”
“She would, of course.”
“I am afraid,” confessed Pen, “that I am not very well-behaved. Aunt says that I had a lamentable upbringing, because my father treated me as though I had been a boy. I ought to have been, you understand.”
“I cannot agree with you,” said Sir Richard. “As a boy you would have been in no way remarkable; as a female, believe me, you are unique.”
She flushed to the roots of her hair. “I think that is a compliment.”
“It is,” Sir Richard said, amused.
“Well, I wasn’t sure, because I am not out yet, and I do not know any men except my uncle and Fred, and they don’t pay compliments. That is to say, not like that.” She looked up rather shyly, but chancing to catch sight of someone through the window, suddenly exclaimed: “Why, there’s Mr Yarde!”