“Well, I said I’d warn you. I hope you don’t mind.”
Sylvia smiled. “I thought you had set out to persuade me to see him again!”
Bates watched her. “I don’t know,” he said, “maybe mine was the best way to persuade you.”
“Why, how charming!” she exclaimed, with a laugh. “You are really subtle.”
“We want to fight the introduction of the English system, Miss Castleman! I don’t mind an aristocracy, because I’m one of ’em; but I don’t want any kings in America! It’s a patriotic duty to pull them off their thrones and keep them off.”
Sylvia pondered. It was a most entertaining view. “And the queens too?” she laughed.
“Yes, and the queens too!”
There was a pause, while she thought. Then she said, “Yes, I think you’re right, Mr. Bates. You may tell His Majesty that I’ll see him—once more!”
§ 16
Sylvia had said that she would go motoring with van Tuiver the following afternoon. He came in a cab, explaining that he had been to dinner in Cambridge, and that his car had run out of fuel. “I’ve a chauffeur who is troubled with absent-mindedness,” he remarked, with what Sylvia soon realized was enforced good-nature. For the car was longer in coming than he expected, and when at last it arrived, she was given an exhibition of his system of manners as applied to servants.