She sighed happily. "Tell me a true story," she said with that insistence of the young on making all things believable. He sipped his tea and frowned meditatively. "Not long ago, my dear, there lived a stupid king." "Your father?" "In any one but you, Pippa, that would be pert. No, he was not my father." "I wonder if Louis----" she began, but he checked her with a portentous frown. "Once," he began again, "there lived a stupid king named Convention." "What a silly name!" "Pippa!" he admonished her with a warning finger. She tried to look serious, but ended by laughing mischievously. "There was a stupid king with a silly name?" she said encouragingly. "This king," he said, "was very wise in some things, and often kind, but his courtiers were a poor lot--Hypocrisy, Snobbery, Good and Bad Form, and a lot of others. Now the king used to favor the men among his subjects." "You mean, he liked men?" "Yes." "So do I," she said in an outburst of frankness. "They are so droll." He poured some fresh tea into the cups. "This King Convention," he said, after a thoughtful pause, "said that men could do a lot of things that women could not, which made the women very angry. Now the king had a jester named Shaw." "What is a jester?" "A man who makes jokes that people may laugh." "Why do they laugh at jokes?" "Well, in England--especially on the stage--it is from the pleasure of meeting old friends. As a race, we are rather sentimental about our jests, and don't take kindly to new ones." She sipped some tea, holding the cup in both hands, but with considerable daintiness. "Tell me an English joke," she said. He stroked his faded little mustache. "The House of Lords," he ventured, after some thought. "_Hé!_ Is that funny?" "Very." "I do not laugh. Tell me another." He broke a corner off a piece of toast. "One of the richest bits of humor in England," he said, "is the idea that children born into wealthy or titled families are superior clay to their fellows." Pippa thought tremendously. "I think, monsieur, I know why you look so sad. It is because of what you have to laugh at in your country.... But please go on and tell me what happened to--how say you it?--the jester." "Ah yes. Well, G. B. Shaw----" "What is this--G. B.?" "Those are his names--Gor' Blime Shaw." Pippa sighed. It was very difficult to become interested in people of such strange nomenclature. "What did he, then, this Gor Shaw?" she asked, feeling that the story must end sometime.