I too wanted to do that; but I found it anything but simple. I might have told her that he was simply a vagrant, just a fellow who wandered about sketching, here to-day and gone to-morrow. That would have been perfectly true. But it would have been equally untrue. That was no picture of Derry. She had seen a far, far truer picture of him when she had turned her head towards him in the toyshop.
"Well, of course that is why I asked you to come for a walk this afternoon, Jennie," I said slowly. "As a matter of fact M'sieur Arnaud's had a very curious experience that I can't very well tell you about. The result of this is that he's—a rather odd sort of person to know. In fact he's better not known. He wanted me to introduce him to your mother, and I told him I'd rather not do so. Anyway he's going away soon."
"That doesn't sound like a horrid sort of person," she commented. "Is that why he came last night—to be introduced to mother?"
"No, he came for something quite different last night."
"What?"
Here again I might have answered with a certain appearance of truth that he had come for money, though it was his own money; but that too would be to misrepresent him. The cigales crackled loudly. I suppose the ladybird was all right again, for it was nowhere to be seen. I mused, and then turned to her.
"You said yesterday that you wished you were back in England, Jennie," I said. "How would you like to come and stay with me in Surrey for a bit?"
"No thank you, Uncle George. Thank you very much."
"It's quite jolly there in its way, and I dare say I could get somebody quite nice to be with you."
"I should like to some day, of course," she said, "but not just now, if you don't think it horrid of me." And she added, "I love being here."