"More than most children of ten years old. I might get a hundred dollars a year. Mamma, I could buy myself new boots then."
"You are nothing but a self-willed child yourself, unable to bear the slightest disappointment," said Miss Opie.
"Never mind," said Mrs. Leigh, coaxingly; "I'll see if I cannot get you the boots. They will give me credit at the store."
"No, no; I know you can't afford it; they were new last April. Mamma is oil to your vinegar, Aunt Jane."
"And you the green young mustard in the domestic salad—hot enough, and, like all ill weeds, growing apace."
"Then it is field mustard, and not used for salad," said Bluebell, anxious for the last word. And, escaping from the room, went to place some bones in the shed, for a casual in the shape of a starving cur, who called occasionally for food and a night's lodging.
About twenty years ago, when this melancholy Mrs. Leigh was a lovely young Canadian of rather humble origin, Theodore Leigh, a graceless subaltern in the Artillery, had just returned from leave, and, going one day to the Rink, was "regularly flumocksed," as he expressed it, by the vision of Miss Lesbia Jones skimming over the ice like a swallow on the wing. And when she proceeded to cut a figure of 8 backwards, and execute another intricate movement called "the rose," his admiration became vehement, and, seizing on a brother-officer he had observed speaking to her, demanded an introduction.
"To the 'Tee-to-tum'? Oh, certainly."
Miss Lesbia was very small, and wore the shortest of petticoats, which probably suggested the appellation.
Fatigued with her evolutions, she had sunk with a pretty little air of abandon on the platform, and her destiny, in a beaver coat and cap, was presented by Mr. Wingfield.