“Oh, dear, yes; with very stiff mustaches, turned up high at the corners, and pink cheeks, and a very sharp, nobby-looking hat, with a light-colored grey coat, and light gloves.  You must know the prince.”

“Upon my word, I never heard of him, my dear.  What did the prince do?”

“He was tooling his own drag, and he had a lady with him on the box.  I never saw anything more tasty than her dress,—­dark red silk, with little fluffy fur ornaments all over it.  I wonder who she was?”

“Mrs. Chitakov, probably,” said the attorney.

“I don’t think the prince is a married man,” said Sophy.

“They never are, for the most part,” said Amelia; “and she wouldn’t be Mrs. Chitakov, Uncle John.”

“Wouldn’t she, now?  What would she be?  Can either of you tell me what the wife of a Prince of Chitakov would call herself?”

“Princess of Chitakov, of course,” said Sophy.  “It’s the Princess of Wales.”

“But it isn’t the Princess of Christian, nor yet the Princess of Teck, nor the Princess of England.  I don’t see why the lady shouldn’t be Mrs. Chitakov, if there is such a lady.”

“Papa, don’t bamboozle her,” said his daughter.

“But,” continued the attorney, “why shouldn’t the lady have been his wife?  Don’t married ladies wear little fluffy fur ornaments?”

“I wish, John, you wouldn’t talk to the girls in that strain,” said their mother.  “It really isn’t becoming.”

“To suggest that the lady was the gentleman’s wife?”

“But I was going to say,” continued Amelia, “that as the prince drove by he kissed his hand—­he did, indeed.  And Sophy and I were walking along as demurely as possible.  I never was so knocked of a heap in all my life.”

“He did,” said Sophy.  “It’s the most impertinent thing I ever heard.  If my father had seen it he’d have had the prince off the box of the coach in no time.”

“Then, my dear,” said the attorney, “I am very glad that your father did not see it.”  Poor Dolly, during this conversation about the prince, sat angry and silent, thinking to herself in despair of what extremes of vulgarity even a first cousin of her own could be guilty.  That she should be sitting at table with a girl who could boast that a reprobate foreigner had kissed his hand to her from the box of a fashionable four-horsed coach!  For it was in that light that Miss Grey regarded it.  “And did you have any farther adventures besides this memorable encounter with the prince?”

“Nothing nearly so interesting,” said Sophy.

“That was hardly to be expected,” said the attorney.  “Jane, you will have a glass of port-wine?  Girls, you must have a glass of port-wine to support you after your disappointment with the prince.”

“We were not disappointed in the least,” said Amelia.

“Pray, pray, let the subject drop,” said Dolly.

“That is because the prince did not kiss his hand to you,” said Sophy.  Then Miss Grey sunk again into silence, crushed beneath this last blow.