He smiled scornfully. Did he not know how she did it? Had he not seen that adorable finger, those appealing eyes?
“And she can’t talk plain! She lisps—truly she does!”
Heavens! Was ever a girl so thick-headed as that sister of his! Brains, technical knowledge, experience of the world, these he had never looked to find in her; but perceptions, feminine intuitions—were they lacking, too?
Poor deluded sex! What shall emancipation, what shall higher education profit you that cannot even now discern what charm has entangled your brothers and husbands?
“She puts her finger in her mouth! She can’t talk plain!” Alas, my sisters, it was Helen’s finger that toppled over Troy, and Diane de Poitiers stammered!
He listened calmly to his sister’s account of his infatuation and its causelessness.
“Why, she’s a nice little girl,” said his aunt, smiling, “but, really, she can’t be called exactly pretty. There is something rather attractive about her eyes.”
In this wise may Mark Antony’s aunt have dismissed the very Serpent of old Nile herself!
“I should like,” he said to his mother the next day, “to go and see her.”
“Well, you can go with me to-morrow, perhaps, when I call on Mrs. Weston,” she assented.