'And you had for your luncheon a bit of bread and an apple.'
'I generally take that as a precaution,' Nan said, simply.
'I thought so,' said Mr. Tom, with great satisfaction at his own shrewdness. 'I can tell in a minute. For you always come back looking highly pleased with yourself and inclined to be cheeky. I don't like the look of you when you're too set up. Your tongue gets too sharp. I'd advise you people to look out.'
Nan's conscience smote her. Was she so glad, then, that even outsiders saw it in her face? She became graver; and she vowed that she would be most reticent at dinner. Had she not promised to herself to try to be ten times kinder to everybody?
And she very soon, at dinner, had an opportunity of displaying her generosity. They were busy making havoc of the manner of a distinguished person who was much talked of at that time, and whom they had all chanced to meet. Now Nan ordinarily was very intolerant of affectation; but had she not promised to be ten times kinder to everybody? So she struck in in defence of this lady.
'But it is her nature to be affected,' said Nan. 'She is quite true to herself. That is her disposition. It wouldn't be natural for her to try not to be affected. She was born with that disposition. Look at the idiotic grimaces that infants make when they try to show they are pleased. And Mrs. —— wouldn't be herself at all if she wasn't affected. She might as well try to leave off her affectations as her clothes. She couldn't go about without any.'
'She goes about with precious little,' said Mr. Tom, who strongly disapproved of scanty ball-dresses. And then he added, 'But that's Nan all over. She's always for making the best of everything and everybody. It's always the best possible world with her.'
'And isn't that wise,' said Frank King, with a laugh, 'considering it's the only one we've got to live in at present?'
Nan was very bright and cheerful during this dinner, and Captain Frank King was most markedly attentive to her, and interested in her talking. When Nan began to speak, he seemed to consider that the whole table ought to listen; and his was the first look that approved, and the first laugh that followed. Then he discovered that she knew all sorts of out-of-the-way things that an ordinary young lady could by no possibility have been expected to know. It was more than ever clear to him that these solitary wanderings had taught her something. Where had she acquired all this familiarity, for example, with details about his own profession—or what had been his profession?
They went on to talk of the jeers of cabmen at each other, and how sharp some of them were. Then again they began to talk about other common sayings—the very origin of which had been forgotten; and Frank King spoke of a taunt which was an infallible recipe for driving a bargee mad—'Who choked the boy with duff?'—though nobody, not the bargees themselves, now knew anything whatever about the tragic incident that must have happened sometime and somewhere.