Dorian, lifting his arms, lays them behind his head.
"I wonder if ever in all my life I had any news," he says, meditatively. "After all, I begin to think I'm not much. Well, let me see: would it be news to say I met and talked with, and walked with your 'lassie wi' the lint-white locks'?"
"Georgie? You——. She was with me all the morning."
"So she told me."
"Ah? And how far did you go with her?"
"To the vicarage. As I had been there all the morning, I couldn't well go in again,—a fact I felt and deplored."
"I am glad you walked back with her," says Miss Peyton; but she doesn't look glad. "I hope you were nice to her?"
"Extremely nice: ask her if I wasn't. And our conversation was of the freshest. We both thought it was the warmest spring day we had ever known, until we remembered last Thursday, and then we agreed that was the warmest spring day we had ever known. And then we thought spring was preferable to summer. And, then, that Cissy Redmond would be very pretty if she hadn't a cocked nose. Don't look so amazed, my dear Clarissa: it was Miss Broughton's expression, not mine, and a very good one too, I think. We say a cocked hat; therefore why not a cocked nose? And then we said all education was a bore and a swindle, and then——. How old is she, Clarissa?"
"You mean Georgie?"
"Yes."