"Where can that be turned into money?" asked her cousin. "It takes wide lands to benefit by the sunshine."
These witticisms, fired in quick retort, and leading to the sort of giddy play that may be imagined, had given cause for the laughter which had added to the Baroness' troubles by making her compare her daughter's future lot with the present, when she was free to indulge the light-heartedness of youth.
"But to give you a gem which cost him six months of work, he must be under some great obligations to you?" said Hortense, in whom the silver seal had suggested very serious reflections.
"Oh, you want to know too much at once!" said her cousin. "But, listen, I will let you into a little plot."
"Is your lover in it too?"
"Oh, ho! you want so much to see him! But, as you may suppose, an old maid like Cousin Betty, who had managed to keep a lover for five years, keeps him well hidden.—Now, just let me alone. You see, I have neither cat nor canary, neither dog nor a parrot, and the old Nanny Goat wanted something to pet and tease—so I treated myself to a Polish Count."
"Has he a moustache?"
"As long as that," said Lisbeth, holding up her shuttle filled with gold thread. She always took her lace-work with her, and worked till dinner was served.
"If you ask too many questions, you will be told nothing," she went on. "You are but two-and-twenty, and you chatter more than I do though I am forty-two—not to say forty-three."
"I am listening; I am a wooden image," said Hortense.