"I cannot match you in brilliant speeches, Miss Melville."
"Call me Miss Melville again, if you dare. Call me Madge, or Meg; but as sure as you mount the stilts of ceremony, I will whisk you off at the risk of breaking your neck. Hark! there is the supper bell. Come, just as you are. You never looked so charming. That wild flow of the hair is perfectly bewitching. I don't wonder Mr. Invincible has grounded his weapons, not I. If I were a young man,—ha, ha!"
"I sometimes fear you are," I cried. At this remark she burst into such a wild fit of laughter, I thought she never would cease. It drowned the ringing of the bell, and still kept gushing over afresh.
"Ask Mrs. Linwood to excuse me from supper," said I; "I do not wish any, indeed I do not."
Well, I am not one of the air plants; I must have something more substantial than sentiment, or I should pine with green and yellow hunger, not melancholy. I never cried but once, that I recollect, and that was when a favorite black cat of mine was killed,—maliciously, villanously killed, by an old maid, just because she devoured her favorite Canary. No, with the daughter of Jephthah, I exclaimed,—
'Let my memory still be thy pride,
And forget not I smiled as I died.'
Shutting, or rather slamming the door, she bounded down the stairs with the steps of the chamois.
I had not finished my mother's history, but I had passed the breakers. There could be nothing beyond so fearful and wrecking. The remainder was brief, and written at times with a weak and failing hand.
"How long I remained in that deadly swoon," continued the manuscript, "I know not. When I recovered, I was lying on my bed, with Peggy standing on one side and a physician on the other. As soon as I looked up, Peggy burst into tears.