My eyes met those of the Grand Duke, and we both burst out laughing at the girl’s quaint philosophy.
“Why, even the Emperor has his speeches composed and written for him by silly old Calitzine,” she went on. “And at Astrakhan the other day I composed a most telling and patriotic speech for His Majesty, which he delivered when addressing the officers of the Army of the Volga. I sat on my horse and listened. The old generals and colonels, and all the rest of them, applauded vociferously, and the men threw their caps in the air. I wonder if they would have done this had they known that I had written those well-turned patriotic sentences, I—a mere chit of a girl, as father sometimes tells me!”
“And the terror of the Imperial family,” I ventured to add.
“Thank you for your compliment. Uncle Colin,” she laughed. “I know father endorses your sentiments. I see it in his face.”
“Oh, do try and be serious, Tattie,” he urged. “See all those people! Salute them, and don’t laugh so vulgarly.” And he raised his white-gloved hand to his shining helmet in recognition of the shouts of welcome rising from those assembled along our route.
Whereat she bowed gracefully again with that slight and rather frigid smile which she had been taught to assume on public occasions.
“If I put up my sunshade they won’t see me, and it will avoid such a lot of trouble,” she exclaimed suddenly, and she put up her pretty parasol, which matched her gown and softened the light upon her pretty face.
“Oh, no, Uncle Colin!” she exclaimed suddenly, as we turned the corner into the Yosnesenskaya, a long, straight street where the throng, becoming greater, was kept back by lines of police in their grey coats, peaked caps and revolvers. “I know what you are thinking. But it isn’t so. I’m not in the least afraid of spoiling my complexion.”
“Then perhaps it is a pity you are not,” I replied. “Complexions, like all shining things, tarnish quickly.”
“Just like reputations, I suppose,” she remarked, whereupon her father could not restrain another laugh.