Bella could not contain herself any longer, but laughed heartily at this profound sentiment.
“Of course we do not expect you to see this with our eyes, Bella, but we're not blind, for all that. Later on came the project for fetching over Tony Butler, when Alice suggested that Mr. Maitland was to drive me over to the Burns ide—”
“Was that so very ungenerous, then?”
“In the way it was done, my dear,—in the way it was done. In that ha, ha, ha! manner, as though to say, 'Had n't you both better go off on a lark to-morrow that will set us all talking of you?'”
“No, no! I'll not listen to this,” cried Bella, angrily; “these are not motives to attribute to my sister.”
“Ask herself; let her deny it, that's all; but, as Sally says, 'There 's no playing against a widow, because she knows every card in your hand.'”
“I really had no idea they were so dangerous,” said Bella, recovering all her good-humor again.
“You may, perhaps, find it out one day. Mind, I 'm not saying Alice is not very handsome, and has not the biggest blue eyes in the world, which she certainly does not make smaller in the way she uses them; or that any one has a finer figure, though some do contrive to move through a room without catching in the harp or upsetting the china. Men, I take it, are the best judges, and they call her perfection.”
“They cannot think her more beautiful than she is.”
“Perhaps not, dear; and as you are so like as to be constantly mistaken—”