“_Have you?_ By Jove, Vivie, you’ve taken something upon yourself! ‘Angels rush in where demons fear to tread....’ I’m mulling the quotation, but in its perfect state it isn’t complimentary. May Valcourt profit by your instructions on Thursday!”
Thursday came, and with it Valcourt. He was pleasing to view; a clean-limbed, broad-shouldered, straight-featured, pink-and-white specimen of the well-bred English youth of sixteen, with fair hair brushed into a silky sweep above a wide, ingenuous brow; sleepy gray-green eyes, with yellow and blue reflections in them, reminding the beholder of tourmaline; well-kept hands, pleasing manners, and a wide, innocent grin of the cherubic-angelic kind, never more in evidence than when Valcourt was engaged in some pursuit neither angelic nor cherubic. Mrs. Mussard, at first sight, was conscious of a brief maternal inclination to kiss him. Geraldine’s boy was, she said to herself, “a perfect duck!” She subdued the osculatory impulse, shook hands with the boy cordially, and hoped the dentist had not hurt him.
“No, thanks awfully,” said Valcourt, with his cherubic grin. The teeth revealed were exceedingly white and regular.
“But you had gas, of course?” proceeded his hostess.
“When I have teeth out I generally do,” said Valcourt carefully. “They always give you half a guinea extra allowance for gas, so most of the fellows ask to have it.” He touched his waistcoat pocket meditatively as he spoke, and smiled, or rather grinned, again so seraphically that Mrs. Mussard longed to tip him a ten-pound note. She gave her young guest a sumptuous luncheon, and, not without serious misgivings, commanded the butler to produce the exhilarating beverage of champagne.
“A little sweet, isn’t it?” said Valcourt critically.
“I thought that you—that is——” Mrs. Mussard crumpled her delicate eyebrows in embarrassment, and the butler permitted himself the shadow of a smile.
“Ladies like sweet wine,” remarked Valcourt. He refused liqueur with coffee, but considered Mrs. Mussard’s cigarettes “rather mild.”
“I—I don’t usually smoke that brand,” his hostess explained. “I—I ordered them on purpose for——” She broke off, in sheer admiration of Valcourt’s beautiful grin.