“Yes, I do,” said Jim Lascelles. “You could draw as good a cow as anybody I ever saw, and that’s the only thing you could do except sit a horse and handle a ferret and eat bread and jam.”
Miss Perry sat in the middle of the sofa. By force of habit she assumed her most characteristic pose.
“There was also one other thing you could do,” said Jim Lascelles. “When you were not actually engaged in eating bread and jam, you could always sit hours on end with your finger in your mouth thinking how you were going to eat it.”
Jim took up his charcoal.
“Goose Girl,” said he, “it’s the oddest thing out. Araminta, Duchess of Dorset, had the habit of sticking her paw into her mouth. And I’ll take my davy her thoughts were of bread and jam.”
“Cream buns are so much nicer,” said Miss Perry, sighing gently.
“You have grown a perfect Sybarite since you came to London,” said Jim. “Nobody ever suspected the existence of cream buns at Slocum Magna.”
Suddenly, and without any sort of warning, something flashed through the mind of Jim Lascelles; and this by some occult means conferred the air and the look upon him that gets people into encyclopedias.
“Don’t move, Goose Girl,” said he. “Do you know who has painted that hair of yours?”
“I don’t think it has been painted,” said Miss Perry.