“A back seat?”—she wondered with a purity!
“If you don’t understand,” said her companion, “it serves me right, as your aunt didn’t leave me with you to teach you the slang of the day.”
“The ‘slang’?”—she again spotlessly speculated.
“You’ve never even heard the expression? I should think that a great compliment to our time if it weren’t that I fear it may have been only the name that has been kept from you.”
The light of ignorance in the child’s smile was positively golden. “The name?” she again echoed.
She understood too little—he gave it up. “And who are all the other best friends whom poor Nanda comes after?”
“Well, there’s my aunt, and Miss Merriman, and Gelsomina, and Dr. Beltram.”
“And who, please, is Miss Merriman?”
“She’s my governess, don’t you know?—but such a deliciously easy governess.”
“That, I suppose, is because she has such a deliciously easy pupil. And who is Gelsomina?” Mr. Longdon enquired.