“My ferns, and my green beetles, and my sea anemones, as Nelly enumerates them, can all be prosecuted here, and I purpose to remain and live here.”
“And Castello?”
“Jack will go and live at Castello,” continued he. “I have interceded with a lady of my acquaintance”—he did not glance at Julia, but she blushed as he spoke—“to keep a certain green room, with a little stair out of it down to the garden, for me when I go there. Beyond that I reserve nothing.”
“We 'll only half value the gift without you, old fellow,” said Jack, as he passed his arm around her, and drew her fondly towards him.
“As one of the uninstructed public,” interposed Cutbill, “I desire to ask, who are meant by 'We'?”
A half insolent toss of the head from Julia, meant specially for the speaker, was, however, seen by the others, who could not help laughing at it heartily.
“I think the uninstructed public should have a little deference for those who know more,” broke in Jack, tartly, for he resented hotly whatever seemed to annoy Julia.
“Tom Cutbill is shunted off the line, I see,” said Cutbill, mournfully.
“If he were,” cried Augustus, “we should be about the most worthless set of people living. We owe him much, and like him even more.”
“Now, that's what I call handsome,” resumed Cutbill, “and if it was n't a moment when you are all thinking of things a precious sight more interesting than T. C, I 'd ask permission to return my acknowledgments in a speech.”