“Ain’t he just cute!” She proceeded to offer sugar.
The small beast gazed haughtily at Mame. And then disdaining the sugar in a most aloof manner, retired at least six inches further into the sleeve of his mistress.
“Rather nice, isn’t he? But always apt to be stiff and formal unless he feels he’s been properly introduced. You see he’s a Chinese emperor’s sleeve-dog and his pedigree goes right back with a click to the First Ming Dynasty.”
“What’s his name?” asked Mame partly for the sake of conversation, partly to show that she was impressed.
“Fu Ching Wei. He was given me by the Emperor of Manchuria when I attended his coronation last year at Mukden.”
In the opinion of Mame this was overdoing it. This girl was certainly trying to put one over on her. And Mame had already come to like her so much, although to be sure she had only known her five minutes, that she felt sorry. If one must pull that sort of guff, one might at least take pains and do it with art. Among “all the folks” whom Mame had supposed this girl knew, emperors had not been included.
XII
“YOU ain’t a newspaper girl, I’ll say?” Mame opened cautiously.
“Yes.” The new acquaintance replenished casually the meerschaum holder.
She wrote for the papers. It was by way of being a solution of the mystery. What these Britishers called a journalist. But a four-flusher all the same. Yet Mame could not help liking her. There was something so forthcoming, something so unstudied. She was so much more natural than Paula Ling. You felt with Paula that if you knew her a hundred years she would never let you catch her with her hair down or without her pinko. But this girl was different.