"Oh! now I understand," said I with a covert smile, "you mean, have I been presented to Her Royal Highness?"
She nodded her chignon affirmatively with a satisfied air, and began biting her under lip, which operation, however, was immediately interrupted by an expressive—"It must be awfully nice."
I took the trouble to give my American friend a lengthy description of our drawing-room receptions, in which she became ardently interested, never interrupting me until I had come to the end. She then surprised me with the question.
"Don't you have any refreshments?" put in a high key.
"Not until we get home," said I laughing. "The ceremony is virtually over when the people have been presented."
This rather disappointed her, I am afraid, but what could I do? She dismissed the subject summarily by touching upon another new one—that of our winter sports. I had to describe the tobogganing costumes, their effect at night when bonfires were burning in the vicinity of the hills, the sensation of going down, and the excitement of trudging back again to the top. She listened admirably and seemed thoroughly appreciative of my generous effort to entertain her. When I had finished, she remarked very quietly.
"It must be real nice, and ever such good fun, but I could never try it. It would smother me right there—I'm always under doctors' orders, you know," she added in a subdued, confidential whisper, "I've got seven diseases?"
"Have you indeed?" I exclaimed in genuine consternation. "You don't look as if you had," I continued by way of encouragement, but without effect, for she interrupted me, fretfully saying:
"Oh, yes I do! Anyone would know I had anaemia, I am so pale, and dyspepsia, for I eat so few things, and such a little at a time; then there's dyscrasia, comes from poverty of the blood, and my palpitations, that prevent me from having any pleasures worth calling so, besides these," she added, putting her reckoning finger upon her thumb, "I suffer from neuralgia, and acute rheumatism, and," (on the second finger of the other, hand, which represented seven) "an inflammation of the spine. So now, what do you think of that?"
"Well, really I am very sorry for you, poor Miss Longfield'" I said with an effort to let my sympathy overcome my burning desire to laugh outright; "you have been very unfortunate indeed, to have contracted so many diseases at once."