“Mr. Frere,” says Sylvia, coming from out a corner of the room, “I am very sorry for what I said just now. Will you forgive me?”
She asked the question in such a prim, old-fashioned way, standing in front of him, with her golden locks streaming over her shoulders, and her hands clasped on her black silk apron (Julia Vickers had her own notions about dressing her daughter), that Frere was again inclined to laugh.
“Of course I'll forgive you, my dear,” he said. “You didn't mean it, I know.”
“Oh, but I did mean it, and that's why I'm sorry. I am a very naughty girl sometimes, though you wouldn't think so” (this with a charming consciousness of her own beauty), “especially with Roman history. I don't think the Romans were half as brave as the Carthaginians; do you, Mr. Frere?”
Maurice, somewhat staggered by this question, could only ask, “Why not?”
“Well, I don't like them half so well myself,” says Sylvia, with feminine disdain of reasons. “They always had so many soldiers, though the others were so cruel when they conquered.”
“Were they?” says Frere.
“Were they! Goodness gracious, yes! Didn't they cut poor Regulus's eyelids off, and roll him down hill in a barrel full of nails? What do you call that, I should like to know?” and Mr. Frere, shaking his red head with vast assumption of classical learning, could not but concede that that was not kind on the part of the Carthaginians.
“You are a great scholar, Miss Sylvia,” he remarked, with a consciousness that this self-possessed girl was rapidly taking him out of his depth.
“Are you fond of reading?”