“Well, what is it all about?” her friend demanded. “Who are they anyway?”
“Oh it would take me three hours to tell you,” the girl cheerfully sighed. “They go back a thousand years.”
“Well, we’ve GOT a thousand years—I mean three hours.” And George Flack settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. “I AM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie,” he went on. “It’s many a day since I’ve been to the old Bois. I don’t fool round much in woods.”
Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, irrelevantly but sociably: “Yes, these French ideas! I don’t see how you can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid.”
“Well, they tell me you like them better after you’re married.”
“Why after they’re married they’re worse—I mean the ideas. Every one knows that.”
“Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk,” Francie said.
“And do they talk a great deal?”
“Well, I should think so. They don’t do much else, and all about the queerest things—things I never heard of.”
“Ah THAT I’ll bet my life on!” Mr. Flack returned with understanding.