"Lizzie," answered Alfred, with gratified vanity.
"Lizzie! Lizzie! I shall have a sister; I love her already, my dear. Of course," she said slyly, "you have her portrait?"
"How do you know, you puss?" he asked, with a laugh and a blush.
She echoed his laugh, and said, with an affectation of superior wisdom,
"I could shut my eyes, and find it--there!" and she touched his breast-pocket lightly.
"Here it is, Lil," he said, bashfully and proudly, taking Lizzie's portrait from his pocket. "What do you think of her? But it doesn't do her justice."
The accumulative sins that photographers are guilty of in "not doing justice" must surely bring a heavy retribution upon them one of these days. But in this instance they found a zealous champion in Lily, who gazed at the portrait with admiring eyes, and kissed it again and again.
"What a beautiful face! what lovely hair!" ("All her own, Lil," interpolated Alfred.) "I can tell that. And she has brown eyes, like mine. And your portrait is in this locket round her neck. When shall I see her really?"
"Soon; I have told her about you. But O, Lily, I am so unhappy with it all! I am the most miserable wretch in the world, I do believe!"
"Unhappy!" exclaimed Lily, bewildered by these alternations of feeling. "Miserable! I don't understand you, Alfred."