"Insolente!" smiled Madame Carré. "Camille doesn't squat down on the floor in the middle of them.
"For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.
To me and to the state of my great grief
Let kings assemble,"
Miriam quickly declaimed. "Ah if you don't feel the way she makes a throne of it!"
"It's really tremendously fine, chère madame," Sherringham said. "There's nothing like it."
"Vous êtes insupportables," the old woman answered. "Stay with us. I'll teach you Phèdre."
"Ah Phædra, Phædra!" Basil Dashwood vaguely ejaculated, looking more gentlemanly than ever.
"You've learned all I've taught you, but where the devil have you learned what I haven't?" Madame Carré went on.
"I've worked—I have; you'd call it work—all through the bright, late summer, all through the hot, dull, empty days. I've battered down the door—I did hear it crash one day. But I'm not so very good yet. I'm only in the right direction."
"Malicieuse!" growled Madame Carré.