She took the dictionary and spent the next half-hour in producing a translation with just the right amount of faults in it. She put it down in front of her employer with a feeling of triumph.
“Please, will this do?”
Lady Heritage looked, frowned, and tore the paper across.
“I thought you said you knew French?”
Jane fidgeted with her pen:
“Of course I know I’m not really good at it, but I looked out all the words I didn’t know.”
“There must have been a good many,” was Lady Heritage’s comment, and the imp made Jane raise innocent eyes and say:
“Oh, there were!”
She went back to her table, and Lady Heritage spoke over her shoulder to Mr. Ember, who appeared to be searching for a book at the far end of the room. She spoke in French—the low, rapid French of the woman to whom one language is the same as another.
“What do they teach at English schools, can you tell me, Jeffrey? This girl says she knows French, and if she can follow one word I am saying now——” She broke off and shrugged. “Yet I dare say she went to an expensive school. Now, I had a Bavarian maid, educated in the ordinary village school, and she spoke English with ease, and French better than any English schoolgirl I’ve come across. Wait whilst I try her in something else.”