Greta stamped with the toe of the dainty little shoe that rested on the beeswaxed boards of the class-room, and kicked the leg of the desk with the heel of the other.
"Please don't spill the white of egg, or upset the gold-leaf. And as I shall be pupil-teacher of the youngest class next term, I suppose I ought to tell you that 'seldomer' isn't in the English dictionary."
"I'm glad of it. I like my own words to belong to me, my own self. I should be ashamed to owe everything I say to silly Nuttall or stupid old Webster. You're artful, Lynette Mildare, trying to change the conversation. I say you don't sympathise with me properly in my affairs of the heart—and you never, never tell me about yours."
The beautiful black-rimmed, golden-tawny eyes laughed as some eyes can, though there was no quiver of a smile about the purely-modelled, close-folded lips.
"Don't tell me you never have, or never had, any," scolded Greta. "You're too lovely by half. Don't try to scowl me down—you are! I'm pretty enough to make the Billy Keyses stand on their silly heads if I told them to, but you're a great deal more. Also, you have style and grace and breeding. Anybody could tell that you came of tremendously swell people over away in England, where the Dukes and Marquesses and Earls began fencing in the veld somewhere about the eleventh century, to keep common people from killing the deer, or carving their vulgar names on the castle walls, and coming between the wind and their nobility. There's a quotation from your dear Shakespeare for you! He does come in handy sometimes."
"Doesn't he!" agreed Lynette, with an ardent flush.
"And you're descended from some of the people he wrote about," pressed Greta. "Own it!"
There was a faint line of sarcasm about the lovely lips.
"Shakespeare wrote of clowns and churls as well as of Kings and noblemen."
"If you were a clown, you wouldn't be what you are. The very shape of your head, and ears, and nails, bespeaks a Princess, disguised as a finished head-pupil, going to take over a class of grubby-fingered little ones—pah!—next term. And don't we all know that an English Duchess sends you your Christmas and Easter and birthday gifts! Come, you might as well speak out, when this is my last term, and we have always been such dear friends, and always will be," coaxed Greta, "because the Duchess lets you out, you know!"