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The female, attired in all the fantastic finery of the period, with more than the usual quantity of bugles, flounces, and trimmings, and holding her fan of ostrich feathers in one hand, and her riding-mask of black velvet in the other, seemed anxious, by all the little coquetry practised on such occasions, to secure the notice of her companion, who sometimes heard her prattle without seeming to attend to it, and at other times interrupted his train of graver reflections, to reply to her.
When they go away from home, riding or travelling, they always wear their best clothes, contrary to the habit of other nations. The English language is broken Dutch, mixed with French and British terms and words, but with a lighter pronunciation. They do not speak from the chest, like the Germans, but prattle only with the tongue."
Pray, my Lady Armida, what did you mean by flinging your spells over me in youth, so that not glory, not fashion, not gaming-tables, not the society of men of wit in whose way I fell, could keep me long from your apron-strings, or out of reach of your dear simple prattle? Pray, my dear, what used we to say to each other during those endless hours of meeting?
"You are quite sure," she persisted, "you are quite sure that he could not have a mission of any sort? that there isn't any meeting of diplomatists here in which he might be interested?" Mr. Draconmeyer smiled with the air of one listening to a child's prattle. "If I were not sure that you are in earnest !" he began. "However, I will just answer your question. Nothing of the sort is possible.
It is not the lights; it is not the brilliant hotels, and theaters, and restaurants, and shops, and tramcars, and hurrying cabs; it is not the music that floats out to you on the rippling surface of the town's deep voice; it is not that voice itself, vibrating as it is with every emotion of the human heart, of pleasure, excitement, careless gayety, shame that has ceased to care, lust whispering its appeal, modesty's shocked sigh, innocence's happy prattle, kind laughter, friendly chat, unexpected hearty greetings; it is the vast, shifting, jostling, loitering, idle crowd, the multitude of a huge cosmopolitan city that is the spectacle, and that to a man who knows his town is more dramatic, and humorous, and pathetic, and fascinating than all the plays to which young ladies, and their papas, too, are hurrying, to thrill, and laugh, and cry over.
He was pleased to notice as he ate his dinner that the giddy prattle above had ceased, and with his back turned toward the couple when he appeared on deck again, he lounged slowly forward until the skipper called him back again. "Wot was them words you said just now, Ted?" he inquired. The mate repeated them with gusto. "Very good," said the skipper, sharply; "very good."
Octavie's silly prattle about a young and handsome foreign nobleman had had a marked effect upon him, and Hélène's heart beat slightly faster as she pondered over this phase of the matter. "He's actually jealous," she thought, and she enjoyed the idea. Beverly's earnest manliness made her admire him greatly. It almost reconciled her to Octavie's silliness!
"You are silent, Vesey," he said, after a pause, speaking with an effort at lightness; "and wisely too, for I know you have nothing to say that is, nothing that could affect the position. And you may well ask, if you choose, to what does all this reminiscent old man's prattle tend?
Holt found that Harry could read and write, and possessed the two languages of French and English very well. The lad so pleased the gentleman by his talk that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged him in his prattle; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the day before, waited upon him now.
But the amiable woman's prattle deserted her when she found herself in the cold stone hall with the great portraits and the lack of all modern frippery. It was so plainly a man's house, so clearly a place of tradition, that her pert modern speech seemed for one moment a fatuity. It was an off-day for the shooters, and so for a miracle there were men in the drawing-room at tea-time.
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