Page 42 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

‘What you just done?’ Mabel asked.

‘Lady Mary’s Room,’ said Addy. ‘You?’

‘Jade Room. Lot of fussy stuff in there.’

‘Mine’s worse. Lady Linda’s awful untidy,’ Addy said. Linda always slept in Lady Mary when she was at the Castle. ‘Here,’ Addy remembered, ‘there was a funny book on her nightstand, all in foreign.’

‘That’ll be German,’ Mabel said. ‘She knows German on account of visiting her aunty, her that married a German prince.’

‘You mean her mother?’

‘No, stupid! Princess Usingen’s her mother, but she’d an aunty that married a German as well. When she was a child.’

‘Oh,’ said Addy, blankly. Then her face cleared. ‘Here, that valet of the prince’s is a nice gent.’

Mabel frowned. ‘What sort of nice?’

Addy giggled. ‘Oh – you know!’

‘I don’t know. What you been up to?’

‘Nothing. Just a bit of a kiss and cuddle. No harm is there?’

‘What? You as well?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I had a kiss and cuddle with him an’ all.’

Addy looked disconcerted. ‘But he said I was a pretty girl.’

‘He said I was too, only he said it in German, on account of he doesn’t speak no English.’

‘Well, he talked English to me,’ Addy said, bewildered.

Mabel took a step towards her, belligerently. ‘You lay off him, Addy Coggins! I saw him first!’

‘You never! Anyway, he said English to me, and that’s better than German. So he must like me better.’

‘Get off! He knows you’re too stupid to understand German.’

‘Well, so are you!’

Rose appeared in the corridor behind them and said furiously, ‘What d’you think you’re doing, bellowing away like fishwives? Shut your mouths and get about your work!’

Mabel had one last shaft to deliver before flouncing away. ‘I know more German than you, anyway! Shmoo-sig! That’s German for a pretty girl, so there!’

Rose maided Lady Linda at the Castle, as she didn’t have a lady’s maid of her own. When she was doing her hair that evening, she said, ‘Can I ask you something, my lady?’

‘Hmm?’ said Linda, staring at her reflection, and thinking that when a lady reached thirty she ought to have diamond earrings. Diamonds close to the face gave it a sparkle.

‘What’s the German word for “pretty”?’ Rose asked.

‘Hübsch,’ Linda said absently.

‘Oh,’ said Rose. ‘So what’s shmoo-sig, then?’

Linda frowned, dragged back from her diamond reverie. ‘What? Do you mean schmutzig?’