Aurora watched her friend while the latter devoted herself to her ice. “You wonder, no doubt, why I should care for her at all. So does mamma; elle s’y perd. I don’t like her particularly; je n’en suis pas folle. But she gives me information; she tells me about her—your—everything but my—extraordinary country. Mamma has always tried to prevent my knowing anything about it, and I’m all the more devoured with curiosity. And then Miss Ruck’s so very fresh.”
“I may not be so fresh as Miss Ruck,” I said, “but in future, when you want information, I recommend you to come to me for it.”
“Ah, but our friend offers to take me there; she invites me to go back with her, to stay with her. You couldn’t do that, could you?” And my companion beautifully faced me on it. “Bon, a false note! I can see it by your face; you remind me of an outraged maître de piano.”
“You overdo the character—the poor American girl,” I said. “Are you going to stay with that delightful family?”
“I’ll go and stay with any one who will take me or ask me. It’s a real nostalgie. She says that in New York—in Thirty-Seventh Street near Fourth Avenue—I should have the most lovely time.”
“I’ve no doubt you’d enjoy it.”
“Absolute liberty to begin with.”
“It seems to me you’ve a certain liberty here,” I returned.
“Ah, this? Oh I shall pay for this. I shall be punished by mamma and lectured by Madame Galopin.”
“The wife of the pasteur?”