“I’m going to tell you,” she interrupted him. “They mean a sort of girl who likes fresh air, washes her face with yellow soap, sports dogskin gloves, drives in an open cart in preference to a shut brougham, enjoys a cold tub and Whyte Melville’s novels, laughs at ghosts and cries over ‘Misunderstood,’ considers the Bishop of London a deity and the Albert Memorial a gem of art, would wear a neat Royal fringe in her grave, and a straw hat and shirt on the Judgment Day if she were in the country for it—walks with the guns, sings ‘Home, Sweet Home’ in the evening after dinner to her bald-headed father, thinks the Daily Mail an intellectual paper, the Royal Academy an uplifting institution, the British officer a demi-god with a heart of gold in a body of steel, and the road from Calais to Paris the way to heaven. That’s what they mean by a sensible sort of girl, isn’t it?”
“I daresay it is,” said the Prophet, endeavouring not to feel as if he were sitting with a dozen or two of very practised stump orators.
“Yes, and that’s what they think I am.”
“And aren’t you?” inquired the Prophet.
Lady Enid drew herself upon the Aberdeen lean-to.
“No,” she said decisively, “I’m not. I’m a Miss Minerva Partridge.”
“Well, but what is that?” asked the Prophet, with all the air of a man inquiring about some savage race.
“That’s the secret—”
“Oh, I beg your pardon!”
“That I’m going to tell you now, because I trust you—”