Alice is warm in her praises of his moustaches, his white teeth, and his graceful figure. Aunt Clarissa, suddenly awakened to her responsibility as the chaperone of a marriageable young lady, has become strangely cautious.
"Mr. Coleman may be a fine young man for aught I have heard," she says, earnestly; "but we really know nothing of him. I doubt whether your father would approve the acquaintance until he can learn something of the gentleman's whereabouts."
"Pshaw!" murmured the cherry lips. "It's so vexatious to be treated like a child! I'm old enough to judge for myself about my friends, and I'm positive that Mr. James Duncan Coleman is a gentleman in every sense of the word!"
Miss Saunders rose, took a card from the salver, and examined it critically, as if she would read the owner's character from his address.
"Did you notice how gracefully he left the room, and how well he talked about the pictures?" asked Alice, after regarding her aunt for a moment with a smile. "Then none but a real, high-born gentleman would have been so respectful in his address to you. Really, Aunt Clarissa, if I liked him particularly, I should be jealous of you; for he admires you exceedingly." This was lie the first.
The spinster's cheeks were suffused with the least tinge of crimson, and her niece, noticing it, was satisfied that the lever was placed in the right position, and that force was all that she needed in order to raise the burden.
"What do you mean by that remark, Alice?" was asked, with assumed dignity.
"I wonder," said the young girl, laughing "whether women ever outgrow their curiosity? Why, when you were gone to the library to get that piece of mosaic, he said,—
"'What an elegant lady Miss Saunders is! She must be a perfect treasure to your father.'" Lie the second.
"I acknowledge he is singularly pleasing," remarked Aunt Clarissa, after a brief pause. "The next time he calls, I will ask him to stay to dinner. I think your father would be pleased to meet him; and then he could soon find out his antecedents."