"But I don't," replied Christopher, who was always inclined to argue a point; "when I like people, I should like them just the same as if they went about yelling Te Deums at the top of their voices; and when I don't like them, it wouldn't make me like them to see them dressed from head to foot in sackcloth and ashes."
"Oh! that's a stupid way of liking, I think."
"It may be stupid, but it's my way."
"Don't you like me better when I cry than when I laugh?" asked Elisabeth, who never could resist a personal application.
"Good gracious, no! I always like you the same; but I'd much rather you laughed than cried—it is so much jollier for you; in fact, it makes me positively wretched to see you cry."
"It always vexes me," Elisabeth said thoughtfully, "to read about tournaments, because I think it was so horrid of the Queen of Beauty to give the prize to the knight who won."
Christopher laughed with masculine scorn. "What nonsense! Who else could she have given it to?"
"Why, to the knight who lost, of course. I often make up a tale to myself that I am the Queen of Beauty at a tournament; and when the victorious knight rides up to me with his visor raised, I just laugh at him, and say, 'You can have the fame and the glory and the cheers of the crowd; that's quite enough for you!' And then I go down from my daïs, right into the arena where the unhorsed knight is lying wounded, and take off his helmet, and lay his head on my lap, and say, 'You shall have the prize, because you have got nothing else!' So then that knight becomes my knight, and always wears my colours; and that makes up to him for having been beaten at the tournament, don't you see?"
"It would have been a rotten sort of tournament that was carried on in that fashion; and your prize would have been no better than a booby-prize," persisted Christopher.
"How silly you are! I'm glad I'm not a boy; I wouldn't have been as stupid as a boy for anything!"