“Well, William dear, I thank God I am spared to be with you a little longer.”
“Amen,” he said, “you dear aunt, dear, dear old Aunt Dinah.”
And they kissed very lovingly, and there was a silence, which Aunt Dinah in a few minutes broke by mentioning the very subject at that moment in his mind.
“You saw Violet a good deal grown—very pretty figure—in fact, I think her lovely; but we must not tell her so, you know. She has been very much admired, and a good, affectionate, amiable little soul she is. There’s young Mr. Trevor. I can tell you people are beginning to talk about it. What do you think?”
William set down his bed-room candle on the tea-table, rubbed the apex of its extinguisher with the tip of his finger, and returned an answer answerless.
“He’s very good-looking; isn’t he? But he thinks a lot of himself; and don’t you think it would be an awful pity little Vi should be married so soon?”
“Then you think he means to ask her?” said Miss Perfect, her silver pencil-case to her chin, her head a little aside, and looking very curiously into her nephew’s eyes.
“I don’t know; I haven’t a notion. He said yesterday he thought her very pretty; but Trevor always talks like no end of a swell, and I really think he fancies a princess, or something of the sort, would hardly be good enough for him.”
“It would, of course, be a very good match for Vi,” said Miss Perfect, dropping her eyes, perhaps a little disappointed, and running her pencil-case back and forward slowly on the edge of William’s plated candlestick, from which they both seemed to look for inspiration; “but a girl so pretty as she may look higher than Mr. Trevor without presumption.”
“Yes, indeed, and there’s no hurry, Heaven knows. I don’t think Trevor half good enough for her,” said William.