“Why, I didn’t know you were in England,” Will exclaimed, taken aback at her unexpected salute, and surveying from head to foot with no very pleased eye the fly-away peculiarities of her over-trimmed costume. “Then you’ve taken to the stage!” He turned hastily to Linnet, and added in English, which Philippina did not understand when he last met her, “She isn’t surely going to play in this piece of mine, is she?”
“_So!_” Philippina answered, in a very Teutonic voice, indeed, but in our native vernacular. “Ach, yes; I am going to play in it; Herr Andreas has arranched all zat wis ze manager. You are surbrized to zee zat I shall blay in your biece. But I haf blay pevore in many bieces in Paris.”
Will glanced at Linnet, a mute glance of inquiry. He didn’t know why, but Linnet’s eyes fell, and a blush spread quick over that clear brown cheek of hers. It wasn’t the familiar blush he was accustomed to see there; he noted at once some tinge of shame and personal humiliation in the look that accompanied it. But she answered quickly, “Oh yes; Philippina’s to play. My husband and Mr Wells have settled all about it.”
“What part?” Will inquired, with a slight sense of sinking; for he wasn’t over-well pleased to hear those dainty lines of his were to be murdered by Philippina’s coarse guttural utterance.
“Ze Brincess Berylla,” Philippina replied, with glib promptitude and great self-satisfaction. “It’s a very schmall part; bod I shall do my best in it.”
Will gave a slight sigh of relief. The Princess Berylla would do at a pinch. If she _must_ sing at all, it was well at least she should sing in so minor a character. Though, to be sure, he had his misgivings how his water-fairies’ song would sound on the stage when delivered with her clumsy Teutonic pronunciation:
“They loved to dwell In a pearly shell And to deck their cell With amber; Or amid the caves That the riplet laves And the beryl paves To clamber.
By the limpets’ home And the vaulted dome Where the star-fish roam They’d linger; In the mackerel’s jaw, Or the lobster’s claw, They’d push and withdraw A finger.”
He trembled to think what sort of strange hash those thick lips of hers would make of his lilting versification.
However, for the moment, and for Linnet’s sake, he said nothing against it. A little later in the afternoon, he had five minutes with the _prima donna_ alone in one of the passages. “Look here, Linnet,” he said hurriedly with a beseeching glance, “_must_ we have Philippina?”