"Only one! Oh, how moderate! Only one! Let me see," with a delicious meditative air, and two slender fingers pressed upon her lips.
"Shall I tell you?"
"Oh, no, no," with a pretty show of eager fear. "If you told any one the charm would be broken, and you would not get what you want. Perhaps—who knows?—the boon I am going to demand will be the very thing you would tell me." This with a sufficiently tender glance from the lustrous azure eyes.
"For my part," says Bebe, wilfully. "I shall wish for something I can never get, just to prove how absurd it all is."
"From time to time we every one of us do that," says Chandos. "We hanker after the impossible. I begin to fear I shall never get my heart's desire."
He glances expressively at Bebe.
"Then think of something else," suggests that young lady, smoothly. "Your second venture may be more successful."
"No, I shall keep to my original wish, until I either gain it or else find further hoping folly."
"Phyllis, it is your turn now. Will you not descend and court fortune?" calls Harriet.
I am deeply engaged listening to mamma while she reads to me Billy's last effusion from Eton, to which place he returned the second day after our ball.