"I don't think Fiammetta is conceited," I pleaded, "but she's used to saying right out when she hates things——"
"That will do, Janey," Aunt Alice interposed hastily. "Run away, children, and find Fiammetta."
As we ran, I reflected that Uncle Edward certainly did not himself fulfil his definition of the perfect guest. When he stayed with us, poor father couldn't smoke a single pipe in the house, and all fruits that had any sort of a smell were banished from the menu.
We found Fiammetta at last in the garage, conversing with the chauffeur.
"He's really a much more interesting man than Mr. Stacey," she confided to me that night when she came to sleep in my bed the floor was hard and rather cold—"he told me about all the accidents he's ever been in."
XVII
A SOLDIER'S BUTTON
His family could not understand why Teddy had such a passion for soldiers. Certainly his family neither inspired nor shared it.
Papa declared them to be "elementary persons of a low standard of intelligence."
Mummy was mildly negative in her views. She did not, like papa, express actual disapproval of them as a class; they may even have had a dimly-felt attraction for her—she was very like Teddy in some ways—but she was a devoted wife, and it would never have occurred to her to champion any cause or individual disapproved of by papa.