“Mystery about whom?” demanded Billie from the depths of her chair.
“Mystery about little Arthur, of course.”
“And who is little Arthur?” asked Mr. Kalisch.
“Little Arthur is little Arthur,” replied Nancy. “We really don’t know.”
“You mean that horrid little boy who is always with the three men?” asked Mrs. Alonzo Le Roy-Jones of Castlewood, Virginia.
Nancy nodded politely. She did not care for this over-dressed, high-voiced woman who talked of the Le Roy-Jones family and their past glories to anybody who would listen to her.
“But he is not horrid, mamma,” put in her daughter, Marie-Jeanne Le Roy-Jones. “When you saw him crying he was suffering. He is very delicate.”
“Marie-Jeanne, a Le Roy-Jones never cried from pain, no, not even when wounded on the battlefield——”
“But, mother, the Le Roy-Joneses were never on a battlefield at the age of ten——”
“Don’t answer back, I beg of you, Marie. It is so bourgeois, so common.”