Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/29

 big, square-faced, deep-voiced lady who took up, as it were, all that side of the room. But Mrs. Bowerbank laid no hand upon him; she only dropped her gaze from a tremendous height, and her forbearance seemed a tribute to that fragility of constitution on which Miss Pynsent desired to insist, just as her continued gravity was an implication that this scrupulous woman might well not know what to do.

'Speak to the lady nicely, and tell her you are very sorry to have kept her waiting.'

The child hesitated a moment, while he reciprocated Mrs. Bowerbank's inspection, and then he said, with a strange, cool, conscious indifference (Miss Pynsent instantly recognised it as his aristocratic manner), 'I don't think she can have been in a very great hurry.'

There was irony in the words, for it is a remarkable fact that even at the age of ten Hyacinth Robinson was ironical; but the subject of his allusion, who was not nimble withal, appeared not to interpret it; so that she rejoined only by remarking, over his head, to Miss Pynsent, 'It's the very face of her over again!'

'Of her? But what do you say to Lord Frederick?'

'I have seen lords that wasn't so dainty!'

Miss Pynsent had seen very few lords, but she entered, with a passionate thrill, into this generalisation; controlling herself, however, for she remembered the child was tremendously sharp, sufficiently to declare, in an edifying tone, that he would look more like what he ought to if his face were a little cleaner.

'It was probably Millicent Henning dirtied my face when she kissed me,' the boy announced, with slow gravity,