"How do you know but I am proud of your rolls of butter too?" said Mr. Linden looking amused. "But Mignonette, what called forth such a display of the carnations you are not proud of? What was the force of that 'And yet'?"
It brought the colour again, and Faith hesitated and looked puzzled,
Then she tried a new way of escape.
"Don't you mean to let me have any of my thoughts to myself?" she said playfully.
"Don't you mean to let me have any of them for myself?"
"You?—Haven't you them almost all?"
"My dear I beg pardon!—one for every carnation,—but I did not know that I had so nearly made the tour of your mind. I was under the impression that my passports were not yet made out—and that my knowledge of your thoughts was all gained from certain predatory excursions, telescopic observations, and such like illegal practices. I am sure all my attempts to cross the frontier in the ordinary way are met by something more impassable than a file of bayonets."
Faith looked up at him as if to see how much of this was meant for true.
"But," said she naively, "I feel as if I had been under a microscope."
"My dear!" said Mr. Linden again, with an air at once resigned and deprecating. But then his gravity gave way. "Faith!—is that your feeling in my company? I wonder you can endure the sight of me."
"Why?"—said she timidly.