She came back with nervous, rapid-fire Gallic, a sudden contrast to his deliberate language. She told him that he should not have said that sort of thing to her, especially before all these people. It may be true. She would not deny that she had all the virtues, but her friends were those who did not gabble smart phrases about her eyes and her ears and her nose as if they were properties for sale. Why couldn’t he have talked of impersonal things as the others had? Well! He would be paid back in kind. Well! She would look into his eyes, and what does she see? Sapristi! Nothing; for his eyes are away. They are busy watching the faces of girls and reporting lies about them!
Leopold, astonished at the spirited attack, offered a most humble apology, and protested his sincerity, keeping steadily to the French, which was to him almost a second tongue. She tossed him aside with a swift change of mood. She knew that it was all fun; but that sort of personal praise always made her unhappy.
He had not thought she would understand, he offered in excuse.
That did not help his case a bit, she returned quickly, for then he had evidently sought deliberately to make her a laughing stock. “Vous voulez rire,” she said, “mais je n’aime pas qu’on se moque de moi!”
Their parley grew less warm. He forced her to laugh by pointing out the gaping crowd of elders. He told her that no one present could possibly give a translation of their conversation, for it had been carried on, not in the studied pace suitable for foreigners, but clipped and jammed into a swift colloquial clatter.
“Look at Diccon,” Leopold went on, still keeping away from English. “He is so surprised, his mouth won’t come shut for a week. And Betty, she—” and so on until nearly everyone in the company was tolled off.
Sensation! The discovery that the Prince really wanted Cinderella after all was nothing in comparison. Where did she get it? Had she lived abroad? No. Had she gone to school? No. Then she must have had tutors. Ah! There it was. Allen Blynn, by way of silly books, had done the trick. Marvelous! Hearty congratulations! It was a miracle of pedagogy.
Blynn denied everything; but they put it down to modesty. Needless to say, from that hour Gorgas was respected by the elder girls and was brought more into their circle. And from that hour, too, she lost the major part of her left-handedness in public. She began to move across the room without striking chairs or sliding ashamed into secluded corners.
Some of the same dignity of bearing, so natural in the open out-of-doors, began to appear within doors; her native comedy spirit, the gift of dramatic caricature, gradually unclosed, to the great surprise of her elder sister.