"Indeed! Well, I'm too busy. Pray hand me a thread of that yellow silk."
"Not if I can help it, ladybird. It's very tiresome sitting here, only to watch your sharp little needle as it drops color into that great flower. One never gets a sight of your full face."
"Then you don't like the profile?" said Clara, demurely, and her needle flashed almost into Hepworth's eyes as he bent over her. "That is just what I expected. It isn't three days since you first pretended to care for me."
"Pretended! Clara?"
"That was the word," answered Clara, holding her work at arms' length, and examining it, with her head on one side, like a bird eyeing the cherry he longs to peck at. "Lovely, isn't it?"
"I have been where you could gather armsful of them from the wayside," answered Hepworth. "That is well enough, of course, for silk and worsted; but you never can get that mixture of crimson, purple and glittering steel, that makes the flower so regal in the tropics; then the soft tassel of pale gold, streaming out from the heart, and thrown into relief by this exquisite combination of colors. Ah, some day I will show you what a cactus really is, Clara."
"Perhaps," said the provoking girl, searching her work-basket for the silk she wanted. "Who knows?"
A flash of color flew across Hepworth's forehead. The handsome fellow never had given himself much to the study of women, and even that pretty creature had the power to annoy him, mature man as he was. She saw that he was vexed, and rather liked it; for if the truth must be told, a more natural coquette never lived than Lady Clara.
"Are you beginning to doubt, Clara?"
"Doubt? Oh! not at all. I don't honestly believe that there ever was a more perfect flower than that. See how the colors melt into each other; then the point of that long, prickly leaf coming out behind. I tell you, Mr. Closs, it's perfect."