“I’ve got back to ‘_Mensonges_,’ Beryl,” she said, as she saw Miss Van Tuyn. “After all, there’s nothing like it. It bites right into one, even on a third reading.”
“Dear old Fanny! I’m so glad you’re being bitten into. I know how you love it, and I’m not going to disturb you. I only came to tell you that I’m going out this evening, and may possibly come back late.”
“I hope you will enjoy yourself, dear, and meet pleasant people.”
Miss Cronin was thoroughly well trained, and seldom asked any questions. She had long ago been carefully taught that the duty of a _dame de compagnie_ consisted solely in being alive in a certain place--the place selected for her by the person she was _dame de compagnie_ to. It was, after all, an easy enough profession so long as a beneficent Providence permitted your heart to beat and your lungs to function. The place at present was Claridge’s Hotel. She had nothing to do except to lie comfortably in bed there. And this small feat, well within her competence, she was now accomplishing with complete satisfaction to herself. She took a happy sip of her camomile tea and added:
“But I know you always do that. You have such a wide choice and are so clever in selection.”
“There isn’t such a wide choice in London as there is in Paris,” she said rather morosely.
“I dare say not. Paris is much smaller than London, but much cleverer, I think. Where would you find an author like Bourget among the English? Which of _them_ could have written ‘_Mensonges_’? Which of _them_ could--”
“I know, dear, I know! They haven’t the bite. That is what you mean. They have only the bark.”
“Exactly! And when one sits down to a book--”
“Just so, dear. The dog that can only bark is a very dull dog. I saw a wonderful dog the other day that looked as if it could bite.”
Fanny Cronin looked rather vague. She was really trying to think what dog was quite the contrary of a poodle, but, after the Channel, her mind was unequal to the effort. So she took another sip of the camomile tea and said:
“It was all brown like a brown bronze. Well, good night, Fanny.”
“Good night, dear. I really wish you would read ‘_Mensonges_’ again when I have finished with it. One cannot read over these masterpieces too often.”