[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
The waiter’s reveille was very unwelcome next morning, but I rose and dressed and found Miss Finnock already in the parlor.
“Oh, the morning air is so bracing, is it not?” she said, as we left the hotel; “it buoys one up so; I feel so light-hearted and free early in the morning; I am as airy as a feather,” and she almost skipped in her youthful exuberance of spirits.
“You had better weigh,” I said, somewhat morosely, as we passed the old lame man and his scales.
I confess I was out of humor. Can you blame me? To be roused at such an hour, to parade over to see tiresome Indians, with a fidgety little woman, who was trying to captivate me, and whom I hated now. Would not her very flow of spirits be provoking?
“See yon dew-drops how they sparkle,” she exclaimed, pointing with a finger on which shone a diamond ring over her glove. “Nature, unlike the ladies, wears her jewels at morn.”
“Then the ladies are not natural,” I said emptily.
“Oh! I confess we are quite artificial in many respects, though not artful—at least I am not.”
“Really, Miss Finnock, do you confess to artificial aid in your beauty?”
“If I had any beauty it would be artificial, of course. You admire beauty, do you not—your lady love is so beautiful?”