“Good morning, madame!” said Pixie in her most Parisian manner, not attempting to shake hands, but bowing with an air of gracious effusion from half-way across the room.
Aunt Margaret let the stocking drop in her lap and stared over her spectacles, shaking her head solemnly as Sylvia related how the new-comer had just returned from Paris, where she had been living under the charge of an old governess.
“That accounts for it!” she said darkly, when the explanations were finished. “I never can understand why people want to go abroad when there are so many good schools at their door. When I was a girl I went to Miss Banks at Peckham, and it was most select. Every girl over fifteen wore a bonnet; mine was white Dunstable, with check ribbons, blue and white. I wore it with a dress with silk pipings, and it was very much admired. My cousin Gertrude went to Paris, because her father had business on the Continent, and she never got over it for years. They gave her dreadful food, and when she could not eat it, it was put aside and brought up meal after meal. She told me as a solemn fact that they used to put fruit in the soup, and there was something dreadful made of cabbages. Did they give you cabbages, my dear?”
“Mais oui, madame!” returned Pixie, involuntarily returning to the language of the place of which they were speaking. “But they were delicious, those cabbage! Mademoiselle has without doubt had an unhappy experience. The cabbage of France is a most excellent cabbage. He resembles himself absolutely to an English cabbage, but he is more well prepared.”
“Speak English, my dear, for pity’s sake! I never could understand that gibberish. My poor father paid extra for me to learn under a native, but it seemed as if I always turned against it. Well, I don’t understand about the cabbages; Gertrude certainly said they were quite sour, and mixed with all manner of horrible things!”
“Perhaps you mean sauerkraut, Aunt Margaret. She would hardly have that in Paris. Are you quite sure it was not Germany where she was at school?”
“Berlin, was it? Berlin!” said Miss Munns, meditating with her finger to her lip. “Yes, I think it was, because I remember I always associated it with the wool. All these foreign schools are alike. Nothing comes of them but bowing and scraping. Give me a good sound English education!”
Miss Munns threaded her needle through the heel of the black stocking with an expression which seemed to imply that the last word was spoken on that subject, and Pixie put on her most engaging manner as she replied, as if anxious to prove that she was not altogether ruined by her Continental experiences—
“Madame is without doubt so clever that she does not need to be taught. Sylvia has told us that you could teach Bridgie better than anyone else. She is the best meaner in the world, is Bridgie, but it comes natural to her to forget. Sylvia said it was wonderful the way you managed the house. You could find the blue-bag in the dark!”
“Find—the blue-bag—in the—dark! Why should I find the blue-bag in the dark? What do I want with it in the dark? The blue-bag! Why should I look for the blue-bag?” cried Miss Munns, all anxiety to fathom the meaning of this perplexing statement.