“Do you talk slang to Lord Delaval?” Zai asks with a smile.
“Pas si bête! I leave that till I have landed my fish!”
“I often wonder, Gabrielle, if you really care for that man, or if you are only trying to catch him.”
“Both, dear. The first feeling naturally induces the last inclination. But we can’t stay chattering here; lunch is ready and the stepmother wants you.”
“What for?” asks Zai, with unusual petulance.
She does not want to leave this charmed spot, with the big trees arching overhead, the swallows foolishly whirling round and round up in the sky, the sunlight falling on hollow and glade and dell, and just over there the house where her Carl dwells.
“How should I know? Lady Beranger is not likely to confide her desires to such a heretic as myself; perhaps she does not think it quite the thing for the flower of her flock to stand like a marble effigy of love and patience for the under-gardener to gape at.”
“As if I care who stares at me!” Zai mutters with unwonted recklessness.
“Of course you don’t, pas le moins du monde! Zaidie Beranger, a modern Galatea, that only her Pygmalion, Carl Conway, can rouse into feeling or life, must naturally be as impervious as the Sphinx to curiosity,” Gabrielle says mockingly, with an expressive shrug of her shoulders that, together with a slight accent, denote that she has only a part claim to English nationality.
“Don’t chaff, Gabrielle, it is most unlady-like,” Zai says, imitating Lady Beranger’s slow solemn voice, and both burst out laughing.