View PDF version of this page

A 'FILLE DE CHAMBRE' 139 Then I too joined in the laugli ; for Metaphora, as I now divined, was none other than the curious bouncing creature whose grin and whose movements had already caught my attention. There are some people who are born to excite a smile. I at once seemed to recognise, by a flash of instantaneous in-sight, that Metaphora was a member of this class ; and the accounts I was presently given of her showed me I was not mistaken. Her manners, her English, and her impulses were all equally entertaining. I was gratified to find that, quite unconsciously, I had already aroused in her the liveliest interest in myself, that she had described me to Mrs. Falkland as being a 'very pretty gentleman,' that she had actually added, ' He all the same as Vahly Pasha '—Vahly Pasha being the Governor, the most magnificent human being she knew—and that that evening she had given special attention to my room, ' because the poor gentleman would be tired, having been all day on the roses.' In Metaphora's language ' the roses,' I found, meant ' roads.' I asked why her idea of making me more com-fortable should have shown itself in hiding whatever I was most likely to want. ' Ah,' said Mrs. Falkland, ' she is really almost half-witted. If I tell her to look for a thing she will often start off before she has heard what it is, and then she will come back to me saying, " I not find it." I say to her, " How can you if you will not stay to hear what it is ? " and then she answers, not so much to me as to herself,

View PDF version of this page