Aunt Denise was getting acquainted with Keble, treating him with a respect that struck Louise as being inherently French. She wondered whether French women had a somewhat more professional attitude towards males than women of other races. Keble looked happy, but his French was buckling under the strain, and Aunt Denise did him the honor of continuing the conversation in English, an important concession.
Of all the scraps of talk Louise could overhear, the scrap which most gratified her,—and she wondered why it should,—was a homely exchange in which her father and Lady Eveley were engrossed. “It’s the pure mountain air,” Dr. Bruneau was explaining. “He couldn’t have a better climate to commence life in.”
“That’s what my husband was saying. You know, when Keble was ten months old we took him to Switzerland——”
“Isn’t it, Mrs. Eveley?” broke in a voice at Louise’s right.
“Isn’t what, Mr. Boots? Mr. Cutty was pounding with his fork and I didn’t hear.”
“Had to pound,” Mr. Cutty defended himself, “to drown Ernest. He’s telling Mrs. Brown I stole plums from her garden.”
“Well, didn’t you?”
“But justice is justice, and the point is, so did Ernest,—and his were riper!”
Louise leaned towards Mrs. Brown, “Do spray arsenic on the rest of the plums dear, and abolish Mr. Cutty. Wasn’t what what, Mr. Boots?”
Mrs. Windrom forestalled him. “Mr. Boots tells me that the settlers are all turning socialists because farming doesn’t pay. Do you mean to say you make no effort to combat such a state of affairs?”