"Get out with you now, and your fine compliments to an old woman!" says Madam, laughing. "If I were your sweetheart, Owen, I'd never believe a word out of your lips."
Mrs. Herrick, laying down her knitting, raises her head, and looks full into Kelly's eyes. As she does so, a smile, lovely as it is unexpected, warms all her statuesque face into perfect beauty.
"And this to me!" says Kelly, addressing his hostess, and pretending to be blind to Mrs. Herrick's glance. "All the afternoon I have been treated by your sex with the most consummate cruelty. With their tongues they have been stabbing me as with so many knives. But yours is the unkindest cut of all. It is, in fact, the—er—carving-knife!"
"Oh! here's the tea," says Olga, in a pleased tone. "Madam, please let me pour it out to-night?"
"Of course, my love, and thank you too."
"And may I to-morrow evening?" asks Monica, with childish eagerness and a quick warm blush.
"You may, indeed, my pretty one; and I hope it won't be long before you pour me out my tea in your own house."
Monica laughs, and kisses her, and Desmond, who is standing near them, stoops over Madam O'Connor and tells her he would like to kiss her too,—first, for her own sake, and secondly, for that sweet hope of hers just uttered.
"Not a bit of it," says she, in return, in a tone as sprightly as it was twenty years ago, though too low for Monica to hear. "Your first and second reasons are all humbug. Say at once you want to kiss me because you think this child's caress still lingers on my lips. Ah ha!—you see I know more than you think, my lad. And hark you, Brian, come here till I whisper a word in your ear; I'm your friend, boy, in the matter, and I wish you luck, though Priscilla Blake kill me for it; that's what I want to say."
"I couldn't desire a better friend," says Brian gratefully.