Elsie suddenly appeared before Tom in her brilliant evening dress and cloud-like loveliness, reducing him to a pitiable state at once.
"Don't you intend to speak to me?" pursued Elsie.
"Of—of course!" said Tom. "I'm so glad to see you—will you shake hands—will you—be—be glad to see me?"
"There is my hand," replied Elsie; "the pleasure depends on how agreeable you make yourself. I suppose you have come back with such fine foreign manners that you will hardly deign to notice us poor plain untravelled people."
"Oh, you don't think that!" said Tom. "You are laughing at me just as usual."
"Did you bring me my bracelet?" demanded Elsie.
"Indeed I did; I'd have brought all Paris if I had thought it would please you."
Elizabeth now plainly thought poor Tom had returned no wiser than when he went away; but Mellen, man-like, never perceived the state in which Elsie's fascinations had thrown the honest fellow, and would not have thought seriously of the matter if he had.
"Of course you speak French like a native—Iroquois, I mean," pursued the pitiless Elsie.
"Just about," replied Tom, as ready as ever to laugh at his own blunders.