At that Notely looked up and shot at her a long, gay challenge without words: his eyes in themselves seemed to fascinate her, as they did most people; she brightened with a caressing, artistic sense of pleasure in them.
"Well, I like that!" said her cousin, having by this time framed a rejoinder to her question. "Grace and I haven't thpooned anything like you and Note did, thailing down, only you're so deuced thly about it!"
"You are disgusting," said she, too lofty and serene to be annoyed.
I had my hat and was slipping out on my errand to the boat. Vesty, with evident distress, was about to explain: I put my finger to my lips with another side glance of such meaning that she kept still and even smiled again.
I called a man and brought him to the house for Mrs. Forrester's directions. He soon returned with the rugs, which Vesty accepted for her baby as well as she could; Uncle Benny all the time singing gleefully.
The party moved to go; in passing through the door Mrs. Forrester dropped her handkerchief. I picked it up and handed it to her.
"Thank you, my poor fellow," she said; "you have the manners of a prince!" and put a coin in my hand—a piece of silver. I took the money.
Vesty was still, after they were gone, her hands over her face. I knew well what thoughts she was thinking.
"Do not go," she said to me, and her voice was like the low cry of her own child; "you are smiling still." She looked at me with strained eyes.
"Well, perhaps because I am glad Mrs. Garrison would not adopt you and take you away from the Basin; perhaps because I am glad no handsome rake will ever ogle you as our lisping young man did Mrs. Notely Garrison."