hed her
himself, saw ideas come to her, saw her have different notions, and more
or less put them to the test, on different nights. She was always
alive--she liked it herself. She gave him ideas, long as he had been on
the stage. Naturally she had a great deal to learn, no end even of quite
basic things; a cosmopolite like Sherringham would understand that a
girl of that age, who had never had a friend but her mother--her mother
was greater fun than ever now--naturally _would_ have. Sherringham
winced at being dubbed a "cosmopolite" by his young entertainer, just as
he had winced a moment before at hearing himself lumped in esoteric
knowledge with Dashwood and Gabriel Nash; but the former of these
gentlemen took no account of his sensibility while he enumerated a few
of the elements of the "basic." He was a mixture of acuteness and
innocent fatuity; and Peter had to recognise in him a rudiment or two of
criticism when he said that the wonderful thing in the girl was that she
learned so fast--learned something every night, learned from the same
old piece a lot more than any one else would have learned from twenty.
"That's what it is to be a genius," Peter concurred. "Genius is only the
art of getting your experience fast, of stealing it, as it were; and in
this sense Miss Rooth's a regular brigand." Dashwood condoned the
subtlety and added less analytically, "Oh she'll do!" It was exactly in
these simple words, addressed to her, that her other admirer had phrased
the same truth; yet he didn't enjoy hearing them on his neighbour's
lips: they had a profane, patronising sound and suggested displeasing
equalities.

The two men sat in silence for some minutes, watching a fat robin hop
about on the little seedy lawn; at the end of which they heard a vehicle
stop on the other side of the garden-wall and the voices of occupants
alighting. "Here they come, the dear creatures," said Basil Dashwood
without moving; and from where they sat Peter saw the small door in the
wall pushed open. The dear creatures were three in number, for a
gentleman had added himself to Mrs. Rooth and her daughter. As soon as
Miriam's eyes took in her Parisian friend she fell into a large, droll,
theatrical attitude and, seizing her mother's arm, exclaimed
passionately: "Look where he sits, the author of all my woes--cold,
cynical, cruel!" She was evidently in the highest spirits; of which Mrs.
Rooth partook as she cried indulgently, giving her a slap, "O