“Well, he isn’t then. He knows how to read and write, and make money, but a drawing-room throws him into a bored agony, and a dinner table is an extended nightmare to his unaccustomed spirit.”
Master shook his head, and frowned terribly.
“But fancy the sensation, Rudolph,” continued Miss Stanna, “of meeting some one to whom our tiresome conventionalities are blank and unwished-for novelties. I sat beside him the other night at dinner. Something told me he didn’t know what to do with his forks and spoons.”
“‘I dare you to eat with your knife,’ I whispered.”
“And did he?” asked my master breathlessly.
“Every morsel. Oh! the sensation. How was Grandmother going to cover that up? She had excuses for everything. ‘Ah! the poor fellow,’ she said, ‘deprived of his father at an early age, cast on the cold world, obliged to eat when and where he could, then his noble qualities asserting themselves, and bringing him back to the sphere in which he was born, where he is amply prepared to shine as one of the leading philanthropists of the day.’”
“So—that’s his pose, is it?” asked my master.
“His pose,” said the girl bursting into a laugh, “his pose—my dear Rudolph—he affirms over and over again, ‘I didn’t sell temperance drinks to reform men, I did it to make money,’ and no one believes him. He’s a hero despite himself.”
“I believe you’re going to marry him,” said my master irritably.
“That’s what Grandmother says,” remarked Miss Stanna with an angelic smile.