marry," replies Dodo.

"What do they do, then?" inquires the younger sister.

"They marry somebody else, and ask the one they like to go and stay with
them. It is much better," she adds. "It is what I shall do."

"Why is it better? It's a roundabout way," objects Lilie. "I shouldn't
care to marry at all," she adds, "only one can't ever be Mistress of the
Robes if one doesn't."

"Oh, everybody marries, of course; only some muff it, and don't get all
they want by it," replies the cynic Dodo.

"_Et l'amour, Miladi Alexandra?_" says the French governess, entering at
that moment. "_Ou donc mettez-vous l'amour?_"

"_Nous ne sommes pas des bourgeoises_," returns Dodo, very haughtily.

The Babe, sitting astride on a chair, trying to mend his mechanical
Punch, who screamed and beat his wife _absolument comme la nature_, as
the French governess said, before he was broken, hears the discourse of
his sisters and muses on it. He is very fond of Brandolin, and he adores
his princess: he would like them to live together, and he would go and
see them without his sisters, who tease him, and without Boom, who lords
it over him. Into his busy and precocious little brain there enters the
resolution to _pousser la machine_, as his governess would call it.

The Babe has a vast idea of his own resources in the way of speech and
invention, and he has his mother's tendencies to interfere with other
people's affairs, and is quite of an opinion that if he had the
management of most things he should better them. He has broken his
Parisian Punch in his endeavor to make it say more words than it could
say, but this slight accident does not affect his own admiration and
belief in his own powers, any more than to have brought a great and
prosperous empire within measurable distance of civil war affects a
statesman's conviction that he is the only person who can rule that
empire. The Babe, like Mr. Gladstone, is in his own eyes infallible.
Like the astute diplomatist he is, he waits for a good opportunity; he
is always where the ladies are, and his sharp little wits have been
preternaturally quickened in that atmosphere of what the French call
"_l'odeur feminine_."

He has to wait some days for his occasion. The frank and friendly
intercourse which existed at first between Brandolin and Madame Sabaroff
is altered: they are never alone, and the pleasant discussions on poets
and poetry, on philosophers and follies, in the gardens in the forenoon