"No, you're not," would be Emily's decided answer; "you only think so yourself. I heard Uncle Edward saying your brother was wise for his age, and knew more than any young man he ever met, and he only laughed about you, and said you were a 'curled darling of nature,' whatever that means. So, then, I guess Uncle Edward knows better than you."
"Now, Miss Emily, I can't stand this; I positively can't you know. It's outrageous to expect me to lie up here and be abused in this shameful fashion, and told anybody's Uncle Edward knows more about me than I do myself. I've an immense respect for Father Murray, but still I won't permit him or anybody else to insinuate that they know more about Mr. Charles Wildair than I do. I've been acquainted with that promising youth ever since he was the size of a well-grown doughnut, and I am prepared to say, without mental reservation of any kind, that he is a perfect encyclopedia of all sorts of learning—a moving, living Webster's Dictionary, neatly bound in cloth. I've undergone grammar, declined verbs and other vicious parts of speech. I have suffered a severe course of geography, and can tell to an iota where Ireland, Kamtschatka, and lots of other aggravating places are situated; I have fought my way through French, and German, and Latin, and other dead languages; and when I go back to New York, I'm bound to have at them again, and have every single one of them, dead or alive, at my fingers ends. I have a taste for poetry and the fine arts, as I evinced in early life by a diligent perusal of that work of thrilling interest known as 'Mother Goose's Melodies', and by becoming a proficient on the Jew's-harp. I have a soul above the common, Miss Nancy, and can discover beauties in a tallow candle, and sublimity in a mug of milk and water. And now, if after this brief and inadequate exposition you don't acknowledge that my thing-um-bob-sentiments do me honor, then your intellect, like small beer in thunder, is something to be looked upon with pity and contempt!"
As Mr. Wildair, Jr., usually promulgated his sentiments to an admiring world in an exceedingly slow and leisurely manner, it took him some time to get to the end of this speech, and when he was done he found that Emily, overcome by the heat and his monotonous tone, was dropping asleep. Making a grimace, he was about to lounge back into his former lazy position, when Georgia, who had left them a moment before in full chase after a butterfly, accompanied by Richmond, returned, looking so woebegone and disconsolate that Charley, after a stare of surprise, felt called upon by the claims of common humanity to offer her consolation.
"May I ask, Miss Georgia, what awful mystery of iniquity has come to light, to make you look as if your last friend had been hung for sheep-stealing? You look about as intensely dismal now as a whole grove of weeping willows."
"Oh! it's my butterfly! my poor butterfly!" said Georgia, sorrowfully, holding up the dead insect, its bright colors all faded and gone.
"Oh, I see—as the blind man said—the insect has departed this life, leaving, no doubt, a large and bereaved circle of friends to mourn its untimely end. Funeral this evening, when friends and relatives are respectfully invited to attend—that's the newspaper style, eh? May I venture to inquire, Georgia, if the butterfly in question was a personal acquaintance of yours, that you look so afflicted at its death? Because if it was, I shall feel called upon to shed a few tears myself, out of regard for you."
"Oh, it was killed; and it was so pretty. Wasn't it pretty?" said Georgia, looking in real grief, amusing to witness, at the poor little crushed insect.
"Strangely beautiful," said Charley. "I remarked it at the time; every feature was perfect. Roman nose, intellectual forehead, well-formed head, with the bump of benevolence largely developed, blue hair, and curly teeth. And so it was killed, was it? Georgia, my friend, in the name of common humanity, in the name of the law, I ask you who was the cold-blooded assassin?"
"Poor little thing! Richmond killed it," said Georgia, too deeply troubled about the loss of the bright-hued insect to notice Charley's highfalutin tones.
"Blood-thirsty monster! let him beware! the day of retribution is at hand!" exclaimed Charley, in tones so tragic that it would have made his fortune on the stage. "Yes, the day is at hand when the oppressed and downtrodden race of butterflies will rise in arms against such tyrants as he, and Mr. Richmond Wildair will probably find himself knocked into a cocked hat. But how did it happen? Explain the horrid deed. I have steeled my soul, and nothing can move me more."