'I am not likely to forget it.'
'Do you chance to know the motto that your virgin queen, Elizabeth, bestowed upon Exeter? It was Semper fidelis.'
'That's a good omen, isn't it,' he said. 'You always do find out the cleverest things, Virginia! How am I ever to keep up with you?'
'Don't try!' I answered, quite too happy to be anything but vainglorious. 'Gaze at me on my superior intellectual height, and when I meet your admiring eyes you can trust me to remember that though you are voluntarily standing on a step below, your head is higher than mine after all! Archibald, do you know what I am to give you for a wedding present?'
'No,' he answered gravely; 'is it your mother?'
'No, I am going to lend mamma to Miss Evesham for a little, until her turn comes,—dear old Cecilia!'
'Do you think it will ever come?'
'It's only just round the corner; Cupid is even now sharpening his arrows and painting little pictures on the shafts.'
'Oh, I see! Well, is it Greytoria? for I don't mind saying that I'm quite ready to give her a stall in my stables at Kindarroch; though of all the ill-conducted and lazy little brutes—'
'Be careful, Archibald,' I exclaimed warningly; 'you owe some few hours of martyrdom, but many a debt of gratitude, to that same Greytoria.'