“We seek no scalps, I say,—because we don’t value them a finger-snap.” And she gave a specimen of the kind of finger-snap she did not value them at.
“In heaven’s name,” he said, “say what you do value, that I may strive to become like it! What do you value, I implore you, tell me?”
“Oh,—my studies, for one thing,—my French and my music,—”
“Could I but translate myself into French, or set myself to an air!”
“Nay, I don’t care for comic songs!”
“I see you like flowers. If I might die, and be buried in your garden, and grow up in the shape of a rose-bush—”
“Or a cabbage!”
“I fear you don’t like that flower.”
“Better come up in the form of your own Virginia tobacco.”
“And be smoked by old Mr. Valentine? No, you don’t like tobacco. Ah, Miss Philipse, this levity is far from the mood of my heart!”