"Some persons have been kind enough to think so," says I, "but it isn't for me to say."
"I love the fitful changes—the soft transparency: nothing can be more lovely," says he.
The occasion required downcast eyes and shrinking silence. I gave him both. There could be no better answer for a speech so personal and yet so poetic.
"I hope you share my feelings in this."
That moment—that precious, precious moment—was broken in upon in a way that makes me clench my teeth as I write. Up the sands, racing forward like a young colt, came "that child," with her flat flying back by the strings, and a broken parasol in her hand; up she flew toward Mr. Burke.
"Come here," says she, "I want you to whip that boy out there within an inch of his life. I broke my parasol over his head, but it wasn't half enough; I want you to give it to him good."
"But what has he done," says Mr. Burke, no doubt riled to the depths of his noble heart, as I was.
"Done enough, I should think. He mimicked the way I carried my parasol, and said some folks wanted to be young ladies before they could read—that's what he has done," says the creature, flaming out like a bantam.
"Perhaps we had better go in," says Mr. Burke, lifting himself out of the sand.
"Not till you've given him hail Columbia," says the creature, taking a new grip on her broken parasol.