chanted Etienne.
"Tout le monde y passe!" chorused the little Princess, holding out her hands.
John Mortimer made a confused noise in his throat and presently was compelled to join the circle and dance slowly round, his countenance meantime suggestive of the mental reserve that such undignified proceedings could only be excused as being remotely connected with the safe shipment of a hundred hogsheads of Priorato.
"The children walk like this,
And the ladies walk like that——"
There was no help for it. Etienne and the Princess first mimicked the careless trip of the children, and then, with chin in the air and lift of imaginary furbelow, the haughty tread of the good dames of Avignon as they took their way homeward over that ancient bridge.
But suddenly arrested with both hands in the air and his mouth open, John Mortimer looked on in confusion and a kind of mental stupor. He was glad that no one of his nation was present to see him making a fool of himself. The next moment Isabel had seized his hand, and he found himself again whirling lumpishly round to the ancient refrain:—
"Sur le pont d' Avignon,
Tout le monde y passe!"
The little Queen's merry laugh rang out at his awkwardness, and then seeing Rollo she ran impetuously to him.
"Come you and play," she cried, "the red foreigner plays like a wooden puppet. And where is that darling little page-boy from Aranjuez?"
"That I cannot tell," quoth Rollo, smiling, "but here comes his sister!"