“It isn’t my precedence!” Lord Lambeth declared, laughing.
“Yes, it is yours—just exactly yours; and I think it’s odious,” said Bessie.
“I never saw such a young lady for discussing things! Has someone had the impudence to go before you?” asked his lordship.
“It is not the going before me that I object to,” said Bessie; “it is their thinking that they have a right to do it—a right that I recognize.”
“I never saw such a young lady as you are for not ‘recognizing.’ I have no doubt the thing is beastly, but it saves a lot of trouble.”
“It makes a lot of trouble. It’s horrid,” said Bessie.
“But how would you have the first people go?” asked Lord Lambeth. “They can’t go last.”
“Whom do you mean by the first people?”
“Ah, if you mean to question first principles!” said Lord Lambeth.
“If those are your first principles, no wonder some of your arrangements are horrid,” observed Bessie Alden with a very pretty ferocity. “I am a young girl, so of course I go last; but imagine what Kitty must feel on being informed that she is not at liberty to budge until certain other ladies have passed out.”