Mellicent’s companions were not in the habit of “marking her words,” but on this occasion they looked thoughtful, for there was no denying that they were already more or less under the spell of the remorseless stranger.
On the afternoon of the fourth day Miss Peggy came down to tea with her pigtail smoother and more glossy than ever, and the light of war shining in her eyes. She drew her chair to the table, and looked blandly at each of her companions in turn.
“I have been thinking,” she said sweetly, and the listeners quaked at the thought of what was coming. “The thought has been weighing on my mind that we neglect many valuable and precious opportunities. This hour, which is given to us for our own use, might be turned to profit and advantage, instead of being idly frittered away—
“‘In work, in work, in work alway,
Let my young days be spent.’
“It was the estimable Dr Watts, I think, who wrote those immortal lines! I think it would be a desirable thing to carry on all conversation at this table in the French language for the future. Passez-moi le beurre, s’il vous plait, Mellicent, ma très chère. J’aime beaucoup le beurre, quand il est frais. Est-ce que vous aimez le beurre plus de la,—I forget at the moment how you translate jam, il fait très beau, ce après-midi, n’est pas?”
She was so absolutely, imperturbably grave that no one dared to laugh. Mellicent, who took everything in deadly earnest, summoned up courage to give a mild little squeak of a reply. “Wee—mais hier soir, il pleut;” and in the silence that followed Robert was visited with a mischievous inspiration. He had had French nursery governesses in his childhood, and had, moreover, spent two years abroad, so that French came as naturally to him as his own mother-tongue. The temptation to discompose Miss Peggy was too strong to be resisted. He raised his dark, square-chinned face, looked straight into her eyes, and rattled off a breathless sentence to the effect that there was nothing so necessary as conversation, if one wished to master a foreign language; that he had talked French in the nursery; and that the same Marie who had nursed him as a baby was still in his father’s service, acting as maid to his sister. She was getting old now, but was a most faithful creature, devoted to the family, though she had never overcome her prejudices against England and English ways. He rattled on until he was fairly out of breath, and Peggy leant her little chin on her hand, and stared at him with an expression of absorbing attention. Esther felt convinced that she did not understand a word of what was being said, but the moment that Robert stopped, she threw back her head, clasped her hands together, and exclaimed—
“Mais certainement, avec pleasure!” with such vivacity and Frenchiness of manner that she was forced into unwilling admiration.
“Has no one else a remark to make?” continued this terrible girl, collapsing suddenly into English, and looking inquiringly round the table. “Perhaps there is some other language which you would prefer to French. It is all the same to me. We ought to strive to become proficient in foreign tongues. At the school where I was at Brighton there was a little girl in the fourth form who could write, and even speak, Greek with admirable fluency. It impressed me very much, for I myself knew so little of the language. And she was only six—”
“Six!” The boys straightened themselves at that, roused into eager protest. “Six years old! And spoke Greek! And wrote Greek! Impossible!”
“I have heard her talking for half an hour at a time. I have known the girls in the first form ask her to help them with their exercises. She knew more than anyone in the school.”