'My eyes! And to see her looking like that!' Then, with a deep sigh, 'If I could only book her for my wife on the spot!'
Whence it may be inferred, that Stella's birth-day party was not only a brilliant success, but might, in Wilmet's phrase, 'lead to something.' All it seemed to have led to at present was a discovery on the part of the good Miss Pearsons, that the household they had been wont to pity as small orphan children, now contained three fine young men.
At least Geraldine connected this with the desire they expressed that Alice might enjoy the same opportunities as Robina of giving her acquirements a final polish, up to diploma pitch. A correspondence commenced, resulting in Miss Knevett being engaged as teacher, being remunerated by lessons in languages and accomplishments. The arrangement gave universal satisfaction; Cherry could not detect any regret on the part of Felix; Alice would still spend her holidays with her aunts; and the sense that her departure was near made the intercourse between the two houses more frequent and familiar than it had ever yet been.
One evening Cherry, while looking up a quotation for Felix in Southey's 'Doctor,' lit on his quaint theory of the human soul having previously migrated through successive stages of vegetable and animal life, and still retaining something characteristic from each transmigration. Her brothers were a good deal tickled with the idea; and Lance exclaimed, 'I know who must have been rhubarb, queen-wasp, and a hen-harrier.'
'Oh, that's too bad!' cried Robina.
'Why a hen-harrier?' asked Felix, recognising, like almost all the others.
'One of the birds of prey where the female is bigger than her mate,' drily observed Edgar.
'Besides,' said Cherry, 'recollect the hen-harrier's countenance in pictures, with beady eyes, and a puffed supercilious smile about the beak.'
'Why, that's Lady Price!' chimed in Alice, making the discovery at last.
Lengthily and gravely Edgar uttered the words, 'Puzzle-monkey, praying mantis, sacred stork, howler.'