"I don't know; I like to keep accounts; I like to oversee and manage a household.... I conducted all the departments of the Café and Cabaret de Biribi—I was manager, housekeeper, general director; I hired and discharged servants, looked after all marketing, all the linen and tableware, kept all accounts and paid all wages.
"I know how to do such things and I like to do them. It was only the other—the secret service—which sickened me. Of course it would have been a great happiness to me if I had been employed in quiet, respectable, and cultivated surroundings, and not in a public place where anybody may enter and misbehave."
"I understand," he said thoughtfully. "If it is necessary, then, you are competent to do your duty as housekeeper in a private house."
"I don't know; I should think so."
"And there is nothing else you prefer?"
Philippa shook her head. Then she picked up her knitting again, settling herself on the edge of the bed, feet crossed, fingers flying, delicate face bent gravely over her work. And all at once it seemed to Warner that her peasant dress was not convincing; that this gay costume of her province which she wore was only a charming masquerade—the pretty caprice of a young girl born to finer linen and a purple more costly—the ephemeral and wayward whim which once had been responsible for the Little Trianon, and irresponsible to everything else except the traditions of a caste.
"Who are you, Philippa?" he asked curiously.
"I?" Her lifted eyes were level with his, very sweet and clear, and the bright needles ceased clicking.
"Don't you know who you are?" he repeated, watching her.
"A foundling.... I told you once."