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“Oh, don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings, my dear boy. I know he said, ‘O my Effendi, behold the Mother of Teeth,’ now didn’t he?” and Lady Haigh laughed long and heartily.

“You are cruelly hard on my poor little attempts at politeness, Cousin Elma. You will give your friend an awful idea of me. Oh, by the bye,” with intense eagerness, “what have you done with the old lady? Is she at Cousin Helena’s? How do they get on together?”

“My dear Charlie, what old lady? I have not the faintest idea whom you mean.”

“Why, the lady graduate, the instructress of youth, Mentor in a pith helmet and spectacles, the new female Lycurgus,—his Excellency’s English governess?”

“Charlie, have I never told you not to run on at such a rate? I want to introduce you. This is Miss Anstruther, officially known as Mademoiselle Antaza, his Excellency’s English governess.”

“Impossible!” cried he, aghast.

“Really,” said Cecil, with some pique in her tone, “everybody seems to think it their duty to impress upon me that I am very young and very giddy for the office. I am rather tired of it.”