"How properly this gentle emblem of innocence and happiness greets you as its mistress."
"And am I not its proper mistress?" asked Lilian artlessly. "It is the bird of peace, too."
"And love—so that it well becomes the hand of beauty."
"Ah! you are beginning to be waggish now. It is just so that your friend Douglas of Finland—he with the flaunting feathers—addresses my gay gossip, Annie Laurie. You know Annie? She is considered the first beauty in the Lothians, and 'tis said (but that is a great secret, and you must not say I said so) that the young lairds of Craigdarroch and Finland are going to fight a solemn duel about her. She is much taller than me."
"Then she is too tall for my taste."
"Oh! but I am quite little; you used to call me little Madam Lily once. But her hair is the most beautiful brown."
"I prefer," said Walter, taking up one of Lilian's heavy tresses, "I prefer the colour that approaches to gold."
"And her eyes are just like mine."
"They must be beautiful indeed."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the merry girl: "harkee, Mr. Fenton, did I not know positively to the contrary, I would think you had been in France."