Frank laughed, then shook his head. “You are quite as mad as ever,” he said. “Where is your companion?”
“I hope,” said Fenella calmly, “that she is dead. I didn’t try to polish off any of the other ones, because they meant well in spite of their aggravatingness, but she was downright wicked. So I led her a life,” she concluded, looking as triumphantly happy as a child who plays truant on a glorious day with a pocketful of pennies and burnt almonds.
Frank shook his head sadly.
“Why won’t you be good, Fenella?” he said. “You could be so easily.”
“I always am,” said Fenella promptly, and nodded her curly head close to his nose. “I take sulphur baths, and regularly sneeze sulphur. I get up every morning at half-past seven. Just think of that! It’s a fearful scramble, because Ronny never will wake up. He sleeps just like you, for ever and ever.” She stopped, and colored vividly, then dashed on again breathlessly, “And of course it takes some time to dress him.”
“You have no nurse, no maid!” he exclaimed, in amazement.
“No,” she replied with great sangfroid, “I like a free hand, and no woman can have that, with a female detective tripping up her heels, and wearing her silk stockings. And I love to wait on Ronny—to wash and dress him, and make him look sweet. Of course,” she added anxiously, “he isn’t always clean—the dirtier a boy is, the nicer he is—but he is perfectly happy! You should see us run down the hill to the Pump-room, though everyone has done long before we get there! And then we eat such a breakfast. We’ve got a dear little fat waiter who simply devotes himself to us, and steals for us all the newest eggs! But he had an awful accident yesterday,” said Fenella, turning tragic eyes on Frank, “what do you think it was?”
“He fell in love with you?”
Fenella began to laugh in that low gurgle which was so like the sound of a cheerful, over-full brook.
“Do you remember you said that about my hairdresser? And how I said I thought it would really have come cheaper in the end if I had married him? I always thought that rather neat myself. But I never told you what the accident was. He broke four hundred plates yesterday!”