Dicky looked so disconsolate that I was touched.
"Still," I said, "you'd better trot out the circumstances, Dicky. We haven't forgotten what you did in your humble way, you know, at election time. I can promise for the family that we'll do anything we can. You mustn't ask us to poison her, but we might lead her into the influenza."
"It's this way," said Mr. Dod. "How remarkably contracted the Place de la Concorde looks down there, doesn't it! It's like looking through the wrong end of an opera glass."
"I've observed that," I said. "It won't be fair to keep them waiting very long down there on the earth, you know, Dicky."
"Certainly not! Well, as I was saying, your poppa's Aunt Caroline is a perfect fiend of a chaperone. By Jove, Mamie, let's be silhouetted!"
"Poppa was silhouetted," I said, "and the artist turned him out the image of Senator Frye. Now he doesn't resemble Senator Frye in the least degree. The elevator is ascending, Richard."
Richard blushed and looked intently at the horizon beyond Montmartre.
"You see, between Miss Portheris and me, it's this way," he began recklessly, but with the vision before my eyes of momma on the steps below wanting her tea, I cut him short.
"So far as you are concerned, Dicky, I see the way it is," I interposed sympathetically. "The question is——"
"Exactly. So it is. About Isabel. But I can't find out. It seems to be so difficult with an English girl. Doesn't seem to think such a thing as a—a proposal exists. Now an American girl is just as ready——"