Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/138

my reputation. Well, as we were saying,” he continued, rushing the outline in on a fresh block, and trying to keep hold of the thread of conversation which gave her that momentary solemnity, “if you use all your favourite expressions when you go to England, people will call you a Colonial. Think of that! Though I have heard girls who have never been out of England quite as bad; but, however———” he hesitated, absorbed in his work, and feeling the difficulty of being all artist and at the same time playing Mentor and Sir Charles Grandison at one and the same moment, for the benefit of his model.

“Well, give me an instance,” said Lizzie, with some dignity. “I really do want to know the lay of the land, for of course we shall go Home some time, and I don’t want people to laugh at me for being a perfect savage. I believe you can tell me things without being disagreeable, like Aunt Granby, when she puts on extra starch, and goes for me like a coach-and-four in a hurricane.”

“Well, for instance—it’s a trifle, but perhaps you needn’t say, ‘That’s a whopper,’ or ‘That’s a good lie,’ every time poor Captain Swan pays you a compliment.”

“Oh, that is a whopper! I don’t! I only snub him sometimes because he is so fearfully