"I have been thinking," she said sweetly, and the listeners quaked at the thought of what was coming. "The thought has been weighing on my mind that we neglect many valuable and precious opportunities. This hour, which is given to us for our own use, might be turned to profit and advantage, instead of being idly frittered away. 'In work, in work, in work alway, let my young days be spent.' It was the estimable Dr. Watts, I think, who wrote those immortal lines! I think it would be a desirable thing to carry on all conversation at this table in the French language for the future. Passez-moi le beurre, s'il vous plait, Mellicent, ma très chère. J'aime beaucoup le beurre, quand il est frais. Est-ce que vous aimez le beurre plus de la—I forget at the moment how you translate jam. Il fait très beau, ce après-midi, n'est pas?"
She was so absolutely, imperturbably, grave that no one dared to laugh. Mellicent, who took everything in deadly earnest, summoned up courage to give a mild little squeak of a reply. "Wee—mais hier soir, il pleut;" and in the silence that followed, Robert was visited with a mischievous inspiration. He had had French nursery governesses in his childhood, and had, moreover, spent two years abroad, so that French came as naturally to him as his own mother tongue. The temptation to discompose Miss Peggy was too strong to be resisted. He raised his dark, square-chinned face, looked straight into her eyes, and rattled out a long, breathless sentence, to the effect that there was nothing so necessary as conversation if one wished to master a foreign language; that he had talked French in the nursery; and that the same Marie who had nursed him as a baby, was still in his father's service, and acted as maid to his only sister. She was getting old now, but was a most faithful creature, devoted to the family, though she had never overcome her prejudices against England, and English ways. He rattled on until he was fairly out of breath, and Peggy leant her little chin on her hand, and stared at him with an expression of absorbing attention. Esther felt convinced that she did not understand a word of what was being said, but the moment that Robert stopped, she threw back her head, clasped her hands together, and exclaimed—
"Mais certainement, avec pleasure!" with such vivacity and Frenchiness of manner, that she was forced into unwilling admiration.
"Has no one else a remark to make?" continued this terrible girl, collapsing suddenly into English, and looking inquiringly round the table. "Perhaps there is some other language which you would prefer to French. It is all the same to me. I think we ought to strive to become proficient in foreign tongues. At the school where I was at Brighton there was a little girl in the fourth form who could speak and even write Greek quite admirably. It impressed me very much, for I myself knew so little of the language. And she was only six——"
"Six!" The boys straightened themselves at that, roused into eager protest. "Six years old! And spoke Greek! And wrote Greek! Impossible!"
"I have heard her talking for half-an-hour at a time. I have known the girls in the first form ask her to help them with their exercises. She knew more than anyone in the school."
"Then she is a human prodigy. She ought to be exhibited. Six years old! Oh, I say—that child ought to turn out something great when she grows up. What did you say her name was, by the by?"
Peggy lowered her eyelids, and pursed up her lips. "Andromeda Michaelides," she said slowly. "She was six last Christmas. Her father is Greek consul in Manchester."
There was a pause of stunned surprise; and then, suddenly, an extraordinary thing happened. Mariquita bounded from her seat, and began flying wildly round and round the table. Her pigtail flew out behind her; her arms waved like the sails of a windmill, and as she raced along, she seized upon every loose article which she could reach, and tossed it upon the floor. Cushions from chairs and sofa went flying into the window; books were knocked off the table with one rapid sweep of the hand; magazines went tossing up in the air, and were kicked about like so many footballs. Round and round she went, faster and faster, while the five beholders gasped and stared, with visions of madhouses, strait-jackets, and padded rooms, rushing through their bewildered brains. Her pale cheeks glowed with colour; her eyes shone; she gave a wild shriek of laughter, and threw herself, panting and gasping, into a chair by the fireside.
"Three cheers for Mariquita! Ho! Ho! Ho! Didn't I do it well? If you could have seen your faces!"