Smith, who had come up beside me to peer out through the blinds, uttered an exclamation.
"That girl in Swiss peasant dress!—she looks like the twin sister to your cook!"
"She is her sister. But she isn't nearly as pretty."
"She's infinitely prettier!" he asserted excitedly. "She's a real beauty!—for a peasant."
I corrected him in my most forbearing manner: "What you are trying to convey to me," said I, kindly, "is that the girl is flamboyantly picturesque, but scarcely to be compared to Thusis for unusual or genuine beauty. That's what you really mean, Smith; but you lack vocabulary."
"Whatever I lack," he retorted warmly, "I mean exactly what I said! For a peasant, that girl is beautiful to an emphatic degree,—far more so than her sister Thusis. Be kind enough to get that."
I smiled patiently and pointed out to him that the hair of the newcomer was merely light golden, not that magnificent Venetian gold-red of Thusis' hair; and that her eyes were that rather commonplace violet hue so much admired by cheap novelists. I don't know why he should have become so animated about what I was striving to explain to him: he said with unnecessary heat: "That's what I'm trying to drive into your Irish head! That girl is beautiful, and her red-headed sister is merely good-looking. Is my vocabulary plain?"
I began to lose my temper: "Smith," said I, "you fell for Thusis before I noticed her at all——"
"I merely called your attention to the resemblance between her and your photograph of 'The Laughing Girl.' And I did not 'fall for her'—as you put it with truly American elegance——"
"Confound it!" I exclaimed, "what do you mean by 'American elegance'? Don't hand me that, Smith—you and your 'My girl's a corker!' Of the two of us you'd be picked for a Yankee before I'd be. And I have my own ideas on that subject, too—you and your Sagas about—