‘And are you great friends? Have you known one another long?’
‘Oh! we have known one another a long time—two months,’ replied young Wellfield; ‘and we are great friends, aren’t we, Jack?’
‘Yes,’ replied ‘Jack,’ with much deliberation.
Indeed all he did and said was deliberate.
‘And can you tell me what each of you likes better than anything else?’ she asked, loth to break off the conversation, and charmed with Master Jerome’s grace and beauty. ‘You, Jerome Wellfield, what do you like best?’
‘I like so many things that are nice,’ said the boy, with a pensive smile; and glancing downwards, the long lashes swept his pale cheek. ‘I like music; and I liked mamma. I liked her drawing-room at Frascati, where the beautiful ladies used to come when I was a little boy. I like—oh! I like everything that is not ugly,’ he concluded, looking rather bored.
‘And you, my boy?’ she turned to the other.
‘I like birds’-nesting,’ was the reply, deliberate, but prompt.
‘What, better than anything? Oh, horrible!’
‘He does not mean birds’-nesting, exactly,’ Jerome explained for him. ‘He means all sorts of things—going into the woods, and learning about birds and watching them, and plants, and butterflies, and all that sort of thing.’