"It is a pleasure to hear him—when he's good!" She laughed with a shade of impatience.
"He's never so good as when he wants to be bad. So there you are, sir!" the old man said. "You're like the princess in the fairy-tale; you've only to open your mouth——"
"And the pearls and diamonds pop out!"—Miss Goodenough, for her patient's relief, completed his meaning. "So don't try for toads and snakes!" she promptly went on to Gray. To which she added with still more point: "And now you must go."
"Not one little minute more?" His uncle still held him.
"Not one, sir!" Miss Goodenough decided.
"It isn't to talk," the old man explained. "I like just to look at him."
"So do I," said Miss Goodenough; "but we can't always do everything we like."
"No then, Graham—remember that. You'd like to have persuaded me that I don't know what I mean. But you must understand you haven't."
His hand had loosened, and Gray got up, turning a face now flushed and a little disordered from one of them to the other. "I don't pretend to understand anything!"
It turned his uncle to their companion. "Isn't he fine?"