“‘Be nice, sweet maid, and let who will be clever,’” declaimed the Bonnie Lassie, who was feeling perverse that day. “You want me to define his social status for you and tell you whether you’d better invite him to dinner. You’d better not. He might swallow his knife.”
“You know he wouldn’t!” denied the girl in resentful tones. “I’ve never known any one with more instinctive good manners. He seems to go right naturally.”
“All due to my influence and training,” bragged the Bonnie Lassie. “I helped bring him up.”
“Then you must know something of his antecedents.”
“Ask the Dominie. He says that Julien crawled out of a gutter with the manners of a preux chevalier. Anyway, he never swallowed any of my knives. Though he’s had plenty of opportunity.”
“It’s very puzzling,” lamented Bobbie.
“Why let it prey like a worm i’ the bud of your mind? You’re not going to adopt him, perhaps?”
For the moment Bobbie Holland’s eyes were dreamy and her tongue unguarded. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with him,” said she with a gesture as of one who despairingly gives over an insoluble problem.
“Umph!” said the Bonnie Lassie.
And continued sculpting.