"Mr. Peck." Her voice was a singular instrument. It had so great a compass and possessed some notes that affected me strangely; but it also could be without the least expression. So it was now when she said, "Mr. Peck," but she colored slightly, as I burst out laughing.
"Peck! Pecksniff? Did you ever see him dance? I should as soon have thought of your dancing with a clothes-horse."
She appeared somewhat troubled.
"Does he dance so badly as that? He told me he danced."
"So he does—like this." I gave an imitation of Peck's gyrations, in which I was so earnest that I knocked over a table and broke a fine lamp, to my great consternation.
"Well, you are realistic," observed Miss Poole, calmly, who struck me as not so much concerned at my misfortune as I might have expected. When, however, she saw how really troubled I was, she was more sympathetic.
"Perhaps, if we go out, they will not know who did it," she observed.
"Well, no, I could not do that," I said, thinking of Peck, and then as her expression did not change, I fired a shot that I meant to tell. "Peck would do that sort of thing. I shall tell them."
To this she made no reply. She only looked inscrutably pretty. But it often came back to me afterward how calmly and quite as a matter of course she suggested my concealing the accident, and I wondered if she thought I was a liar.
She had a countenance that I once thought one of the most beautiful in the world; but which changed rarely. Its only variations were from an infantile beauty to a statuesque firmness.