"Dear big boy," said his mother, "you must not nod, you must speak."
How his face glowed. Now he was like other boys and had his own mother to reprove and correct him.
His manner became quite roguish, and getting up from the stool where he was sitting he made a low bow and said, "Madame, my Mother and Madame the Princess—or perhaps I should say 'your highness'?"
"I beg of you," and the newcomer made a pretty gesture with one of her gloved hands, "'Madame' is quite sufficient."
"I can not read newspapers here very much," Dallas went on, "for we are galloping about all day like happy ponies and fall into our beds at night very tired, but I have heard the grown people say that Russia is in a terrible state."
"Yes, that is true," said Madame de Valkonski. "The populace is building up with one hand and tearing down with the other. If one did not wish to be killed one had to flee. Not only intelligent ones, but many pauper persons go to foreign lands. If they are like the Bolshy you speak of, how can they know what kind of a country they have come to unless someone tells them?—That is what we do, your mother and I. We bring bewildered ones to the mountains, and when they see the wildness and the trees they exclaim, 'A second homeland!' We tell them that they are under a good government. If they obey the laws and work hard they will be happy. We keep agitators away from them, and we take pains to teach them the language of their new home."
"How splendid in you!" said the boy. "I should like to help. May I?" and he turned to his mother.
"Certainly—we can start a junior class for you, but what will you teach?"
He looked puzzled, then his roving eye fell on me. "All about ponies," he said, "and how good it is for boys and girls to live out-of-doors and love trees and animals."
His mother's sweet hoarse laugh rippled out over the veranda. "My son shall be professor of equitation."