The young girl shook her parasol again in a pretty, threatening way as she said—
"You are not tired, Elizabeth?"
"Tired! Oh no; it is very pleasant," she replied, in a voice that was low and musical with the sweetness of her broken reverie.
"See, you are in the minority, Mrs. Harrington," cried Elsie Mellen. "You had better submit with a good grace."
"Oh, I knew Elizabeth dared not side against you; she spoils you worse than anybody, even your brother."
"But it's so nice to be spoiled," said Elsie, gayly; "and you must help in it, or I shall do something dreadful to you just here before everybody's eyes."
She clenched her hand playfully, as if to carry her threat into instant execution, and Mrs. Harrington cried out—
"I promise! I promise! James, take another turn."
The man turned his horses with a broad sweep, taking the road around the largest lake. Here the spoiled beauty ordered him to stop. She wanted to look at the swans, "such great, white, lovely drifting snowballs as they were." Mrs. Harrington made no objection, but leaned back with a resigned smile on her lips.
A person possessed of far more imagination than Elsie Mellen ever dreamed of, might have stopped on the very road to paradise to gaze on that pretty, Arcadian scene.