“About you?” I echoed with a smile. “Oh, nothing, I assure you—or, at least, nothing that was not nice.”
“You’re a dear, I know,” declared the girl, her father laughing amusedly the while. “But you are so dreadfully proper. You’re worse about etiquette than father is—and he’s simply horrid. He won’t ever let me go out shopping alone, and I’m surely old enough to do that!”
“You’re quite old enough to get into mischief, Tattie,” replied her father, speaking in French.
“I love mischief. That’s the worst of it,” and she pouted prettily.
“Yes, quite true—the worst of it, for me,” declared His Imperial Highness. “I thought that when you went to school in England they would teach you manners.”
“Ordinary manners are not Court manners,” the girl argued, trying to rebutton one of her gloves which had come unfastened.
“Let me do it,” I suggested, and quickly fastened it.
“Thank you,” she laughed with mock dignity. “How charming it is to have such a polished diplomat as Mr Colin Trewinnard to do nice things for one. Now, isn’t that a pretty speech? I suppose I ought to study smart things to say, and practise them on the dog—as father does sometimes.”
“Really, Tattie, you forget yourself, my dear,” exclaimed her father, with distinct disapproval.
“Well, that’s nothing,” declared my charming little companion. “Don’t parsons practise preaching their sermons, and lawyers and statesmen practise their clever untruths? You can’t expect a woman’s mouth to be full of sugar-plums of speech, can you?”