My companion almost stopped, looking at me; there was a little flush in her cheek. “Voilà!” she said. “There’s my false position. I want to be an American girl, and I’m not.”
“Do you want me to tell you?” I went on. “An American girl wouldn’t talk as you are talking now.”
“Please tell me,” said Aurora Church, with expressive eagerness. “How would she talk?”
“I can’t tell you all the things an American girl would say, but I think I can tell you the things she wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t reason out her conduct, as you seem to me to do.”
Aurora gave me the most flattering attention. “I see. She would be simpler. To do very simple things that are not at all simple—that is the American girl!”
I permitted myself a small explosion of hilarity. “I don’t know whether you are a French girl, or what you are,” I said, “but you are very witty.”
“Ah, you mean that I strike false notes!” cried Aurora Church, sadly. “That’s just what I want to avoid. I wish you would always tell me.”
The conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, in front of us, had evidently not become a close one. The young lady suddenly turned round to us with a question: “Don’t you want some ice-cream?”
“She doesn’t strike false notes,” I murmured.
There was a kind of pavilion or kiosk, which served as a café, and at which the delicacies procurable at such an establishment were dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the little green tables and chairs which were 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 to Aurora Church; our companions were on the other side of the table.