“Charley’s not a bad little sort. Of course, he needs coaching a bit here and there—just now, for instance, when he didn’t see that that girl wouldn’t think of riding in the machine that had just killed her dog. By Jove, give that girl a year in civilization and she’d do! Who was the young fire-eater?”
“Fire-eater! He’s a lot more decent than you or I.”
“But that’s saying so little, dear boy!”
“Seriously, Beverly.”
“Oh, hang it with your ‘seriously’! Well, then, seriously, melodrama was the correct ticket and all that in 1840, but we’ve outgrown it; it’s devilish demode to chuck things in people’s faces.
“I’m not sorry John Mayrant did it!” I brought out his name with due emphasis.
“All the same,” Beverly was beginning, when the automobile returned rapidly upon us, and, guessing the cause of this, he waved the parasol. Charley descended to get it—an unnecessary act, prompted, I suppose, by the sudden relief of finding that it was not lost.
He made his thanks marked. “It is my sister’s,” he concluded, to me, by way of explanation, in his slightly foreign accent. “It is not much, but it has got some stones and things in the handle.”
We were favored with a bow from the veiled Hortense, shrill thanks from Kitty, and the car, turning, again left us in a moment.
“You’ve got a Frenchman along,” I said.