Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/158

148 "You like the others very much?"

"Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you."

"That one at the studio didn't make much of me, certainly."

"Yes, she's the most haughty," said Francie.

"Well, what is it all about?" Mr. Flack inquired. "Who are they, anyway?"

"Oh, it would take me three hours to tell you," the girl replied, laughing. "They go back a thousand years."

"Well, we've got a thousand years—I mean three hours." And George Flack settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. "I do enjoy this drive, Miss Francie," he went on. "It's many a day since I've been to the Bois. I don't fool round much among the trees."

Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was very agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with a smile, irrelevantly and cheerfully: "Yes, these French ideas! I don't see how you can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid."

"Well, they tell me you like them better after you are married."

"Why, after they are married they're worse—I mean the ideas, Every one knows that."

"Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk," Francie said.