“I believe that Madame le Roy thought I was not making much progress—that another system of education might suit me better.”
A long practice in the art of fibbing had given Bonnybell a high degree of proficiency, and no one that heard this unhesitating utterance, and saw the unflinching though modest directness with which her eyes met those of her catechist, would guess how much larger a draft upon the girl’s imagination than her memory the explanation had made.
Camilla listened, uncomfortably puzzled. The reason given sounded ludicrously inadequate, yet the child’s whole air and manner was that of one telling the simple truth.
Mrs. Tancred had never had the advantage of living with a really good liar; and so dismissing all doubt of the unlikely fact recorded, her mind made a transition to the cynically amused speculation as to what the alternative system of education could be that taught its pupil to spell the word “brougham” as poor Miss Ransome had so lately been innocently guilty of doing.
Bonnybell’s thoughts meanwhile resolved themselves into the two distressed self-queries, “If she goes on like this much longer, shall I be able to help contradicting myself?” and, “Is it possible that Edward is going to have the brutality to leave us to ourselves for the whole evening?”
It was not possible; or, at least, the dreaded contingency did not happen, and Edward himself followed soon, though saunteringly, upon the heels of his guest’s fears.
He stood for a few minutes with his back to the fire, not looking particularly at either of his ladies, but rubbing his foot gently over Jock’s reverse, that dog sharing the belief of many of his race, that the really civil way to receive a friend is to roll over on your back, and flourish all your four legs in the air at once, like waved hands, at him.
Bonnybell drew a breath of relief. How much lighter the atmosphere had grown since he came in! and one might relax the strain to remember what one’s last sentence had been, and to be sure that it did not contradict one’s last but one! Yet it seemed destined to be an evening of tête-à-têtes. Though the one whose prolongation she had dreaded was happily at an end, Miss Ransome soon found herself involved in a second one with her host himself.
Mrs. Tancred having been given a low-voiced message by the butler, from which the words “water-bed,” “gratitude,” “invaluable” dimly emerged, a message whose tail was brusquely cut off by the recipient of it, but which resulted in her hastily leaving the room, a peril of a different kind from her former one must await the visitor.
“Of course, now that she is clear off, he will begin to make love to me! Was I ever alone in the room for five minutes with a man without his beginning to make love to me! Tom began the first evening. Happily I am a good way off!”