"Did you never see me make salad dressing before?" said the other, quite as sharply.
"You know it is simply because Sir Keith Macleod is coming to lunch. I forgot all about it. Oh, and that's why you had the clean curtains put up yesterday?"
What else had this precocious brain ferreted out?
"Yes, and that's why you bought papa a new necktie," continued the tormenter; and then she added, triumphantly, "But he hasn't put it on this morning, ha—Gerty?"
A calm and dignified silence is the best answer to the fiendishness of thirteen. Miss White went on with the making of the salad-dressing. She was considered very clever at it. Her father had taught her: but he never had the patience to carry out his own precepts. Besides, brute force is not wanted for the work: what you want is the self-denying assiduity and the dexterous light-handedness of a woman.
A smart young maid-servant, very trimly dressed, made her appearance.
"Sir Keith Macleod, miss," said she.
"Oh, Gerty, you're caught!" muttered the fiend.
But Miss White was equal to the occasion. The small white fingers plied the fork without a tremor.
"Ask him to step this way, please," she said.