"Oh, do, please!"
"My name is Marie Sophie Louise Waren Fitzwaren."
"Phoebus, what a name!"
"And dis, Mistah 'Buthnot, is my guv'ness, Miss Green. She is a tarn fool."
The lady thus designated had come unexpectedly upon the scene. An estimable and bespectacled gentlewoman of uncompromising mien, she gazed down upon her charge with the gravest austerity.
"Marie Louise, if I hear that phrase again you will go to bed."
As Miss Green spoke, however, she gazed at me over her spectacles in a humorously reflective fashion.
Marie Louise shrugged her small shoulders disdainfully, and in a tone that, to say the least, was peremptory, ordered the butler, who looked venerable enough to be her great-grandfather, to bring the tea. The congé that the venerable servitor performed upon receiving this order rendered it clear that upon a day he had been a confidential retainer in the royal house of Illyria.
"I am afraid, Miss Green," said I, tentatively, "that your post is no sinecure."
"That mite of four has the imperious will of a Catherine of Russia," said Miss Green, with an amused smile. "If she ever attains the estate of womanhood, I shudder to think what she will be."