"Good morning," said Norman. "May I help you with the water?" Alsandrian is an easy, simple, and sonorous language, and Norman had been learning it and talking it to himself ever since the tramp he met in the night had directed his thoughts and footsteps toward the country of Alsander, yet he was very shy at practising for the first time this newly-acquired tongue.
"Ah, I thought you were a foreigner," said the girl, speaking with the strained simplicity and slight mispronunciation that we all of us employ for the benefit of strangers and infants. "What is your country and your home?"
"England."
"England? Why you are the first Englishman I have ever seen! How beautiful you are!"
Norman smiled, unable, and indeed unwilling, to deprecate his personal appearance.
"It is you who are beautiful," he said, slowly, labouring with the strange tongue, "Are they all like you in Alsander?"
"Do you think it possible?"
She drew herself up with such grace that Norman's arms twitched and ached. But he was rather in awe of her.
"How bright your eyes are!" he said.
"Are they? What colour do you think they are?" she asked, turning them full on him.