"'Be nice, sweet maid, and let who will be clever,'" declaimed the
Bonnie Lassie, who was feeling perverse that day. "You want me to define
his social status for you and tell you whether you'd better invite him
to dinner. You'd better not. He might swallow his knife."

"You know he wouldn't!" denied the girl in resentful tones. "I've never
known any one with more instinctive good manners. He seems to go right
naturally."

"All due to my influence and training," bragged the Bonnie Lassie. "I
helped bring him up."

"Then you must know something of his antecedents."

"Ask the Dominie. He says that Julien crawled out of a gutter with the
manners of a _preux chevalier_. Anyway, he never swallowed any of _my_
knives. Though he's had plenty of opportunity."

"It's very puzzling," lamented Bobbie.

"Why let it prey like a worm i' the bud of your mind? You're not going
to adopt him, perhaps?"

For the moment Bobbie Holland's eyes were dreamy and her tongue
unguarded. "I don't know what I'm going to do with him," said she with a
gesture as of one who despairingly gives over an insoluble problem.

"Umph!" said the Bonnie Lassie.