“The what?” she asked.
“What are you playing at?” inquired Dale.
“I was referring to the ring,” said I.
They both burst out laughing, to my discomfiture.
“What do you take me for? A circus rider? Performing in a tent and living in a caravan? You think I jump through a hoop in tights?”
“All I can say,” I murmured, by way of apology, “is that it's a mendacious world. I'm deeply sorry.”
Why had I been misled in this shameful manner?
Madame Brandt with lazy good nature accepted my excuses.
“I'm what is professionally known as a dompteuse,” she explained. “Of course, when I was a kid I was trained as an acrobat, for my father was poor; but when he grew rich and the owner of animals, which he did when I was fourteen, I joined him and worked with him all over the world until I went on my own. Do you mean to say you never heard of me?”
“Madame Brandt,” said I, “the last thing to be astonished at is human ignorance. Do you know that 30 per cent of the French army at the present day have never heard of the Franco-Prussian War?”