“Then I would not be Miss Curtis. How horribly you must differ!”
Rachel was absolutely silenced by this cross fire; something so unlike the small talk of her experience, that her mind could hardly propel itself into velocity enough to follow the rapid encounter of wits. However, having stirred up her lightest troops into marching order, she said, in a puzzled, doubtful way, “How has he prepared you to hate us?—By praising us?”
“Oh, no; that would have been too much on the surface. He knew the effect of that,” looking in his sleepy eyes for a twinkle of response. “No; his very reserve said, I am going to take her to ground too transcendent for her to walk on, but if I say one word, I shall never get her there at all. It was a deep refinement, you see, and he really meant it, but I was deeper,” and she shook her head at him.
“You are always trying which can go deepest?” said Rachel.
“It is a sweet fraternal sport,” returned Alick.
“Have you no brother?” asked Bessie.
“No.”
“Then you don’t know what detestable creatures they are,” but she looked so lovingly and saucily at her big brother, that Rachel, spite of herself, was absolutely fascinated by this novel form of endearment. An answer was spared her by Miss Keith’s rapture at the sight of some soldiers in the uniform of her father’s old regiment.
“Have a care, Bessie; Miss Curtis will despise you,” said her brother.
“Why should you think so?” exclaimed Rachel, not desirous of putting on a forbidding aspect to this bright creature.