“Ah, you mean I strike false notes!” she quite comically wailed. “See how my whole sense for such things has been ruined. False notes are just what I want to avoid. I wish you’d always tell me.”
The conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, in front of us, had evidently not borne fruit. Miss Ruck suddenly turned round to us with a question. “Don’t you want some ice-cream?”
“She doesn’t strike false notes,” I declared.
We had come into view of a manner of pavilion or large kiosk, which served as a café and at which the delicacies generally procurable at such an establishment were dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the little green tables and chairs set out on the gravel; M. Pigeonneau, fluttering with a sense of dissipation, seconded the proposal, and we presently sat down and gave our order to a nimble attendant. I managed again to place myself next Aurora; our companions were on the other side of the table.
My neighbour rejoiced to extravagance in our situation. “This is best of all—I never believed I should come to a café with two strange and possibly depraved men! Now you can’t persuade me this isn’t wrong.”
“To make it wrong,” I returned, “we ought to see your mother coming down that path.”
“Ah, my mother makes everything wrong,” she cried, attacking with a little spoon in the shape of a spade the apex of a pink ice. And then she returned to her idea of a moment before. “You must promise to tell me—to warn me in some way—whenever I strike a false note. You must give a little cough, like that—ahem!”
“You’ll keep me very busy and people will think I’m in a consumption.”
“Voyons,” she continued, “why have you never talked to me more? Is that a false note? Why haven’t you been ‘attentive’? That’s what American girls call it; that’s what Miss Ruck calls it.”
I assured myself that our companions were out of ear-shot and that Miss Ruck was much occupied with a large vanilla cream. “Because you’re always interlaced with that young lady. There’s no getting near you.”