The little girl considered it beneath her dignity to respond to this. Suddenly, however, she remembered her manners.
"How do you do?" she said, rising, and holding out a small right hand.
"How do you do?" replied Valentine, as he took it and shook it warmly.
"I hope you had a pleasant journey?"
"Very pleasant, thank you. My eye, aren't you a funny one! I should think you were Miss Herrick herself."
"I am the youngest Miss Herrick. My aunt will come down soon, I think."
"Oh, I say, come off your perch, do! She is my aunt, too. I shall die if you keep on talking like your great-grandmother. Why, how old are you, little Miss Betsey?"
"I am eleven. Did you ever see my great-grandmother?"
Valentine stared. He had not been in Fourth Street long enough to know that Elizabeth's great-grandmother was a very real personage to her, her name being often quoted by the aunts. The titles of their ancestors were too much reverenced to be used as figures of speech.
"Not that I know of," he said. "And so you are eleven. Just the same age as Marjorie, and she would make two of you."