“So Teddy has seen you after all. Sometimes I thought Mr. Snoogles was only a game.”
“Indeed, I’m not a game. What a horrid thing to be! Imagine being a football?”
“Or a pin-cushion,” said Veronica hastily. “I know because I believed I was one once, but only for a short time,” she added, because she was truthful, but also in case Mr. Snoogles found a stray pin on the floor and, remembering what she had said, might stick it into her. He looked such a tidy man.
“I can assure you, Madam, that I will not request you to do anything at all difficult. I shall only require your services for a short period—say about ten years.”
“Ten years? But in ten years I shall be quite old—that is, quite grown up. I shall be twenty-one.”
“Well, what of that? My work is much more amusing than what you do all day—lessons, walks, quarrels.”
Veronica felt a little taken aback.
“But I don’t quarrel—that is to say, not much, not nearly as much as do our cousins in the country or as the long-haired family we see in the park. Would you like to hear my names? I am not madam yet. You see, I am not married. And won’t you sit down?”
“No, I never sit down. It’s lazy. Proceed with your names. Though I know what I call you to myself.”
“I was christened Elizabeth Veronica Sybella—now, what do you call me?”