"So do I," said Edgar with the intention of taking her part. "What are these things?" holding up a few cuckoo-flowers that were half hidden like delicate shadows among the primroses.
"You certainly show your liking by your knowledge. I thought every schoolboy knew the cuckoo-flower!" cried Adelaide, trying to seem natural and not bitter in her banter, and not succeeding.
"I can learn. Never too late to mend, you know. And Miss Dundas shall teach me," said Edgar.
"I do not know enough: I cannot teach you," Leam answered, taking him literally.
"My dear Leam, how frightfully literal you are!" said Adelaide. "Do you think it looks pretty? Do you really believe that Major Harrowby was in earnest about your giving him botanical lessons?"
"I believe people I respect," returned Leam gravely.
"Thanks," said Edgar warmly, his face flushing.
Adelaide's face flushed too. "Are you going through life taking as gospel all the unmeaning badinage which gentlemen permit themselves to talk to ladies?" she asked from the heights of her superior wisdom. "Remember, Leam, at your age girls cannot be too discreet."
"I do not understand you," said Leam, fixing her eyes on the fair face that strove so hard to conceal the self within from the world without, and to make impersonal and aphoristic what was in reality passionate disturbance.
"A girl who has been four years at a London boarding-school not to understand such a self-evident little speech as that!" cried Adelaide, with well-acted surprise. "How can you be insincere? I must say I have no faith, myself, in Bayswater ingénues: have you, Edgar?" with the most graceful little movement of her head, her favorite action, and one that generally made its mark.