Part 43 (1/2)
My Lady Johnson wished to rest; and there was a romance out of France awaiting her in gilt binding in her chamber.
She went, when the board was cleared, linking her arm in Claudia's.
Penelope took up her knitting with a faint smile at me.
”Will you tell me a story to amuse me, sir?” she said in her shy way.
”You shall tell me one,” said I.
”I? What story?”
”Some story you have lived.”
”I told you all.”
”No,” said I, ”not any story concerning this very pest of suitors which plague you--or, if not you, then me!--as the suitors of the first Penelope plagued Telemachus.”
Now she was laughing, and, at one moment, hid her face in her yarn, still laughing.
”Does this plague you, John Drogue?” she asked, still all rosy in her mirth.
”Well,” said I, ”they all seem popinjays to me in their blue and gold and buff. But it was once red-coats, too, at Caughnawaga, or so I hear.”
”Oh. Did you hear that?”
”I did. They sat like flies around a sap-pan.”
”Deary me!” she exclaimed, all dimples, ”who hath gossiped of me at Cayadutta Lodge?”
”Penelope?”
”I am attentive, sir.”
”I suppose all maids enjoy admiration.”
”I suppose so.”
”Hum! And do you?”
”La, sir! I am a maid, also.”
”And enjoy it?”
”Yes, sir.... Do not you?”
”What?”
”Do not you enjoy admiration? Is admiration displeasing to young men?”
”Well--no,” I admitted. ”Only it is well to be armed with experience--hum-hum!--and discretion when one encounters the flattery of admiration.”