Will you promise to put
yourself into my hands?"
"You will find me a most unpromising pupil."
"Not in the least. I will undertake that when you leave this you shall
be _au fait_ at everything. Leap frog is not too heavy for me and
spillikins not too light. I am up to them all, from backgammon to a
cotillon,--not but what I prefer the cotillon for my own taste."
"Or leap-frog, perhaps," suggested Florence.
"Well, yes; leap-frog used to be a good game at Gother School, and I
don't see why we shouldn't have it back again. Ladies, of course, must
have a costume on purpose. But I am fond of anything that requires a
costume. Don't you like everything out of the common way? I do."
Florence assured him that their tastes were wholly dissimilar, as she
liked everything in the common way. "That's what I call an uncommonly
pretty girl," he said afterward to M. Grascour, while Sir Magnus was
talking to Sir Thomas. "What an eye!"
"Yes, indeed; she is very lovely."
"My word, you may say that! And such a turn of the shoulders! I don't
say which are the best-looking, as a rule, English or Belgians, but
there are very few of either to come up to her."
"Anderson, can you tell us how many tons of steel rails they turn out at
Liege every week? Sir Thomas asks me, just as though it were the
simplest question in the world.
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