“I have never been to Versailles until my visit to Miss Lord and I have never seen the park until this afternoon,” Julie answered a little sullenly.
It was impossible that the two girls should immediately understand each other, separated as they were by race, education and opportunities. Yet as Bettina was the older, the fault was perhaps hers.
Julie appeared to Bettina more of a child than she actually was, only too unchildlike in certain details, because of having had to depend too much upon herself. The younger girl’s personality was really not pleasant to Bettina and she had an odd distrust of her. But this she would not have confessed at this period of their acquaintance even to herself.
She especially hoped to be able to make friends with Julie, feeling that she would particularly like to interest her in the Camp Fire.
“Well, you could scarcely see the park at a more interesting time than this afternoon!” Bettina replied, feeling a little ashamed of the fact that it had not occurred to her that Julie had probably been too poor all her life even for this short excursion from Paris to Versailles.
The two girls were now at the end of the Royal Walk. Beyond them, between long avenues of budding trees, they were able to behold the great Palace, pale yellow in the afternoon sunlight. Nearby was a statue of the Car of Apollo, the Sun God, rising from an artificial lake, his car drawn by four bronze horses.
At this moment, Marguerite Arnot and David Hale were signaling to them. Julie and Bettina walked on toward the others.
This afternoon all the fountains in the park at Versailles were playing.
“Don’t you think, Mr. Hale, this is just as interesting a scene as any in the eighteenth century when all the fashionable world of Paris used to come out here? Still I should like to have seen the costumes of those days, the women in their hoop skirts and later in the fashions of the Empire, the men with their satin coats and knee breeches.”
The four of them were standing still at the moment Bettina made her little speech. She then turned to Marguerite Arnot.