knowing exactly what to do with his cap, the boy had kept it in his hand. The foregoing conversation was, of course, so much Greek in his ears. He realized that they were talking about him, and was fully alive to the girl’s demure admiration. The English words came with the more surprise, seeing that they followed so quickly on some remark in an unknown tongue.
He led the way at once, hoping that his mother had regained her normal condition of busy cheerfulness.
Silence reigned in the front kitchen when he pressed the latch. The room was empty, but the clank of pattens in the yard revealed that the farmer’s thrifty wife was sparing her skirts from the dirt while she crossed to the pig tub with a pailful of garbage.
“Will you take a seat, ma’am?” said Martin politely. “I’ll tell mother you are here.”
With a slight awkwardness he pulled three oaken chairs from the serried rank they occupied along the wall beneath the high-silled windows. Feeling all eyes fixed on him quizzically, he blushed.
“Ah, v’là le p’tit. Il rougit!” laughed the nurse.
“Don’t tease him, nurse!” cried the child in English. “He is a nice boy. I like him.”
Clearly this was for Martin’s benefit. Already the young lady was a coquette.
Mrs. Bolland, hearing there were “ladies” to visit her, entered with trepidation. She expected to meet the vicar’s aunt and one of that lady’s friends. In a moment of weakness she had consented to take charge of the refreshment stall at a forthcoming bazaar in aid of certain church funds. But Bolland was told that the incumbent was adopting ritualistic practices, so he sternly forbade his better half to render any assistance whatsoever. The Established Church was bad enough; it was a positive scandal to introduce into the service aught that savored of Rome.
Poor Mrs. Bolland therefore racked her brain for a reasonable excuse as she crossed the yard, and it is not to be wondered at if she was struck almost dumb with surprise at sight of the strangers.
“Are you Mrs. Bolland?” asked the lady, without rising, and surveying her through the eyeglasses with head tilted back.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ah. Exactly. I – er – am staying at The Elms for some few weeks, and the people there recommended you as supplying excellent dairy produce. I am – er – exceedingly particular about butter and milk, as my little girl is so delicate. Have you any objection to allowing me to inspect your dairy? I may add that I will pay you well for all that I order.”
The lady’s accent, no less than the even flow of her words, joined to unpreparedness for such fashionable visitors, temporarily bereft Mrs. Bolland of a quick, if limited, understanding.
“Did ye say ye wanted soom bootermilk?” she cried vacantly.
“No, mother,” interrupted Martin anxiously. For the first time in his life he was aware of a hot and uncomfortable feeling that his mother was manifestly inferior to certain other people in the world. “The lady wishes to see the dairy.”
“Why?”
“She wants to buy things from you, and – er – I suppose she would like to see what sort of place we keep them in.”
No manner of explanation could have restored Mrs. Bolland’s normal senses so speedily as the slightest hint that uncleanliness could harbor its microbes in her house.
“My goodness, ma’am,” she cried, “wheä’s bin tellin’ you that my pleäce hez owt wrong wi’t?”
Now it was the stranger’s turn to appeal to Martin, and the boy showed his mettle by telling his mother, in exact detail, the request made by the lady and her reference to the fragile-looking child.
Mrs. Bolland’s wrath subsided, and her lips widened in a smile.
“Oah, if that’s all,” she said, “coom on, ma’am, an’ welcome. Ye canna be too careful about sike things, an’ yer little lass do look pukey, te be sure.”
The lady, gathering her skirts for the perilous passage of the yard, followed the farmer’s wife.
Martin and the girl sat and stared at each other. She it was who began the conversation.
“Have you lived here long?” she said.
“All my life,” he answered. Pretty and well-dressed as she was, he had no dread of her. He regarded girls as spiteful creatures who scratched one another like cats when angry and shrieked hysterically when they played.
“That’s not very long,” she cried.
“No; but it’s longer than you’ve lived anywhere else.”
“Me! I have lived everywhere – in London, Berlin, Paris, Nice, Montreux – O, je ne sais – I beg your pardon. Perhaps you don’t speak French?”
“No.”
“Would you like to learn?”
“Yes, very much.”
“I’ll teach you. It will be such fun. I know all sorts of naughty words. I learnt them in Monte Carlo, where I could hear the servants chattering when I was put to bed. Watch me wake up nurse. Françoise, mon chou! Cré nom d’un pipe, mais que vous êtes triste aujourd’hui!”
The bonne started. She shook the child angrily.
“You wicked girl!” she cried in French. “If madame heard you, she would blame me.”
The imp cuddled her bare knees in a paroxysm of glee.
“You see,” she shrilled. “I told you so.”
“Was all that swearing?” demanded Martin gravely.
“Some of it.”
“Then you shouldn’t do it. If I were your brother, I’d hammer you.”
“Oh, would you, indeed! I’d like to see any boy lay a finger on me. I’d tear his hair out by the roots.”
Naturally, the talk languished for a while, until Martin thought he had perhaps been rude in speaking so brusquely.
“I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said.
The saucy, wide-open eyes sparkled.
“I forgive you,” she said. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen. And you?”
“Twelve.”
He was surprised. “I thought you were younger,” he said.
“So does everybody. You see, I’m tiny, and mamma dresses me in this baby way. I don’t mind. I know your name. You haven’t asked me mine.”
“Tell me,” he said with a smile.
“Angèle. Angèle Saumarez.”
“I’ll never be able to say that,” he protested.
“Oh, yes, you will. It’s quite easy. It sounds Frenchy, but I am English, except in my ways, mother says. Now try. Say ‘An’ – ”
“Ang – ”
“Not so much through your nose. This way – ‘An-gèle.’”
The next effort was better, but tuition halted abruptly when Martin discovered that Angèle’s mother, instead of being “Mrs. Saumarez,” was “the Baroness Irma von Edelstein.”
“Oh, crikey!” he blurted out. “How can that be?”
Angèle laughed at his blank astonishment.
“Mamma is a German baroness,” she explained. “My papa was a colonel in the British army, but mamma did not lose her courtesy title when she married. Of course, she is Mrs. Saumarez, too.”
These subtleties of Burke and the Almanach de Gotha went over Martin’s head.
“It sounds a bit like an entry in a stock catalogue,” he said.
Angèle,