"Good Heavens!" repeat I, again, with more accentuation than before, and with my usual happy command and variety of ejaculation.
"And you?" she says, lifting her face, and speaking with a joyful confidence of anticipation in her innocent eyes, "and you? you are pleased too, are not you?"
"Of course," reply I, quickly calling to my aid the galvanized smile and the unnatural tone in which I have been perfecting myself all the forenoon, "delighted! I never was so pleased in my life. I told you so in my letters, did not I?"
A look of nameless disappointment crosses her features for a moment.
"Yes," she says, "I know! but I want you to tell me again. I thought that you—would have such a—such a great deal to say about it."
"So I have!" reply I, uncomfortably, fiddling uneasily with a paper-knife that I have picked up, and trying how much ill-usage it will bear without snapping, "an immensity! but you see it is—it is difficult to begin, is not it? and you know I never was good at expressing myself, was I?"
We have sat down. I am not facing her. With a complexion that serves one such ill turns as mine does, one is not over-fond of facing people. I am beside her. For a moment we are both silent.
"Well," say I, presently, with an unintentional tartness in my tone, "why do not you begin? I am waiting to hear all about it! Begin!"
So Barbara begins.
"I am afraid," she says, smiling all the while, but growing as red as the bunch of late roses in my breast, "that I looked horribly pleased! One ought to look as if one did not care, ought not one?"