She looked up into his clean-cut, pleasant American face.
"No, I ain't," she said. "You come from God's country"—she suddenly began to beat her pudgy fists on the sheets—"and whyinhell I ever was crazy enough to leave little old Noo York I don't know excep' I was damfoolenough to do it!"
Smith smiled at her: "You sure were some peach," he said, dropping gracefully into the vernacular, "when you played with Nazimova in that Eastside theater."
The Princess flushed all over, and the radiance of her smile transfigured her amazingly.
"Did you see me in them days, Doc?"
"You betcha!"
"Well-f'r-God's-sake!" she gasped in wonder and delight. "Say, you had me fooled, Doc. I understood you was a Norsky—a sort of tree-peddlin' guy. But, thinks I to myself, he looks like a Yank. I says so to my brother, Leo Puppsky——"
"Don't say it to him again, Princess. Or to anybody."
At that the Princess fixed her shrewd little eyes on Smith, shifted them for an instant to me, then resumed her scrutiny of his serene and smiling features.
"What's the idea?" she asked at last.