"Oh, Nolly, what?" says Mona; "do tell us." She fixes her eyes on his.
"'What darling little hands you have!'" begins Nolly, quite innocently.
"Well, really!" says Mona, mistaking him. She moves back with a heightened color, disengages her hands from his and frowns slightly.
"I wasn't alluding to your hands; though I might," says Nolly, pathetically. "I was only going to tell you what Jack said to Violet. 'What darling little hands you have!' he whispered, with the very silliest expression on his face I ever saw in my life; 'the prettiest hands in the world. I wish they were mine.' 'Gracious powers!' said I to myself, 'I'm in for it;' and I was as near falling off the branch of the tree right into their arms as I could be. The shock was too great. I suppressed a groan with a manful determination to 'suffer and be strong,' and——"
"Never mind all that," says Doatie: "what did she say?"
By this time both Nicholas and Geoffrey are quite convulsed with delight.
"Yes, go on, Noll: what did she say?" repeats Geoffrey, the most generous encouragement in his tone. They have all, with a determination worthy of a better cause, made up their minds to forget that they are listening to what was certainly never meant for them to hear. Or perhaps consideration for Nolly compels them to keep their ears open, as that young man is so overcome by the thought of what he has unwillingly gone through, and the weight of the secret that is so disagreeably his, that it has become a necessity with him to speak or die; but I believe myself it is more curiosity than pity prompts their desire for information on the subject in hand.
"I didn't listen," says Nolly, indignantly. "What do you take me for? I crammed my fingers into my ears, and shut my eyes tight, and wished with all my heart I had never been born. If you wish very hard for anything, they say you will get it. So I thought if I threw my whole soul into that wish just then I might get it, and find presently I never had been born. So I threw in my whole soul; but it didn't come off. I was as lively as possible after ten minutes' hard wishing. Then I opened my eyes again and looked,—simply to see if I oughtn't to look,—and there they were still; and he had his arm round her, and her head was on his shoulder, and——"
"Oh, Nolly!" says Dorothy, hastily.
"Well, it wasn't my fault, was it? I had nothing to do with it. She hadn't her head on my shoulder, had she? and it wasn't my arm was round her," says Mr. Darling losing patience a little.