“Oh I shall be awfully proud.”
“I shall speak of you personally—I shall say you’re the prettiest girl that has ever come over.”
“You may say what you like,” Francie returned. “It will be immense fun to be in the newspapers. Come for me at this hour day after to-morrow.”
“You’re too kind,” said George Flack, taking up his hat. He smoothed it down a moment with his glove; then he said: “I wonder if you’ll mind our going alone?”
“Alone?”
“I mean just you and me.”
“Oh don’t you be afraid! Father and Delia have seen it about thirty times.”
“That’ll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anything else could make me do, that we’re still old friends. I couldn’t bear the end of THAT. I’ll come at 3.15,” Mr. Flack went on, but without even yet taking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel, whether it were as good as last year and there were many people in it and they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on a different plane and scarcely waiting for the girl’s answer: “And now for instance are they very bigoted? That’s one of the things I should like to know.”
“Very bigoted?”
“Ain’t they tremendous Catholics—always talking about the Holy Father; what they call here the throne and the altar? And don’t they want the throne too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman,” Mr. Flack added. “And those grand ladies and all the rest of them.”