"Men may be handsome and not alike. Father is certainly one of the handsomest elderly men of my acquaintance--and the major is so-so-ish--but, I wonder you can think a man of seven-and-twenty so very like one of sixty odd. Bob tells me he can play the flute quite readily now, Beulah."
"I dare say; he does everything he undertakes uncommonly well. Mr. Woods said, a few days since, he had never met with a boy who was quicker at his mathematics."
"Oh! All Mr. Wood's geese are swans. I dare say there have been other boys who were quite as clever. I do not believe in non-pareils, Beulah."
"You surprise me, Maud--you, whom I always supposed such a friend of Bob's! He thinks everything you do, too, so perfect! Now, this very evening, he was looking at the sketch you have made of the Knoll, and he protested he did not know a regular artist in England, even, that would have done it better."
Maud stole a glance at her sister, while the latter was speaking, from under her cap, and her cheeks now fairly put the riband to shame; but her smile was still saucy and wilful.
"Oh nonsense," she said--"Bob's no judge of drawings--He scarce knows a tree from a horse!"
"I'm surprised to hear you say so, Maud," said the generous-minded and affectionate Beulah, who could see no imperfection in Bob; "and that of your brother. When he taught you to draw, you thought him well skilled as an artist."
"Did I?--I dare say I'm a capricious creature--but, somehow, I don't regard Bob, just as I used to. He has been away from us so much, of late, you know--and the army makes men so formidable--and, they are not like us, you know--and, altogether, I think Bob excessively changed."
"Well, I'm glad mamma don't hear this, Maud. She looks upon her son, now he is a major, and twenty-seven, just as she used to look upon him, when he was in petticoats--nay, I think she considers us all exactly as so many little children."
"She is a dear, good mother, I know," said Maud, with emphasis, tears starting to her eyes, involuntarily, almost impetuously--"whatever she says, does, wishes, hopes, or thinks, is right."