"I don't believe a bit of that."
"Yes, you do," she replied quietly, "and now, Cornelius, mind my words: that sort of thing is not in the girl's way, and will not be for a good time yet; perhaps never, for she has a very flinty heart."
"Don't I know it?" he replied composedly, "and was it not Christian charity made me uneasy about poor Armari? I feared lest that brown, golden hair of hers," he added, smoothing it as he spoke, "might prove such a web as even his heart could not break. Lest her eyebrow, so dark and fine, might be the very bow of Cupid. Lest—"
"Spare us the rest," interrupted Kate, "it must be an arrow shot from the eye at the very least. Don't you see, besides, the girl has sense enough to laugh at it all; though I don't mean to say that if Signor Armari loses his heart and gets it back again so easily, he might not have paid her that little compliment. However, he did not, and it is as well, for she does not chance to be one of those soft girls, who, poor things, must be in love to exist; and her jealous grandpapa, who does not care about her himself, and yet won't let another have her, is, if he but knew it, perfectly safe."
"Is he?" said Cornelius, throwing back his head in his old way.
"Indeed he is," replied his sister, poking the fire in her old way, too; "another piece of advice, Cornelius: don't make the girl vain by talking and acting, as if she were the only decent-looking one in existence."
"There grows but one flower in my garden," he said, looking at me with a fond smile, "and so I fancy that every one casts on it a longing eye; as if elsewhere there grew no flowers."
His flower laid her head upon his shoulder, and looking up in his face, laughed at him for his pains.
"Laugh away!" he observed philosophically, "you have opened in the shade, and you know nothing of the sun; but the sun, my little Daisy, will shine on you yet."