“Ruth, it seems to me, was old enough to have known better,” retorted his victim with asperity. “You haven't scanned that last line properly either. 'And Ruth not thirty years old' gives the correct lilt.” Ruth sat down to write her letters. She turned her back with deliberation upon her tormentor, who answered: “Oh, yes, thanks,” and went off murmuring and tattooing on his fingers,—
“And Ruth not thirty years old....”
II
Towards five o'clock of that day, Lucilla and Ruth, spurred and booted—hatted and gloved from their afternoon's drive, appeared for tea upon the terrace. Ponty without loss of time opened fire:
“A slighted child, at her own will,
Went wandering over dale and hill
In thoughtless freedom bold.”
“Only that I can't wander, in thoughtless freedom bold, over dale and hill in this fair false land of Italy,” cried Ruth, exasperated, “I should start at once for a fortnight's walking tour. I feel an excessive desire to remove myself from a deluge of poetic allusions which threatens to get on my nerves. Moreover,” she added severely, “I quite fail to see their application.”
She sat down, drew her gloves off with a little militant air, and prepared to pour the tea which the servant had placed upon a table at her elbow. In the fine October weather the terrace, provided with abundance of tables, chairs and rugs, made, with its superb view over Florence, the pleasantest of al fresco extensions to the drawing-room.
“There, there, there, Ruthie!” soothed Pontycroft, “don't resent a little natural avuncular chaff. I must play the fool or play the devil. You wouldn't wish to suppress my devouring curiosity, would you? Here's a situation brimful of captivating possibilities. You wouldn't have me sit in unremunerative silence, in sterile torpor before this case of a little American girl, who, on any day of the week, may be called to assume the exalted rôle of Crown Princess of Altronde?”