He had knocked down Tom Dupuy. That was a good thing as far as it went! For that at least, if for nothing else, Nora was duly grateful to him. But had she gone too far in thanking him? Would he accept it as a proof that she meant him to reopen the closed question between them? Nora hoped not, for that—that at anyrate was now finally settled. She could never, never, never marry a brown man! And yet, how much nicer and bolder he was than all the other men she saw around her! Nora liked him even for his faults. That proud, frank, passionate Noel temperament of his, which many girls would have regarded with some fear and no little misgiving, exactly suited her West Indian prejudices and her West Indian ideal. His faults were the faults of a proud aristocracy; and it was entirely as a member of a proud aristocracy herself that Nora Dupuy lived and moved and had her being. A man like Edward Hawthorn she could like and respect; but a man like Harry Noel she could admire and love—if, ah if, he were only not a brown man! What a terrible cross-arrangement of fate that the one man who seemed otherwise exactly to suit her girlish ideal, should happen to belong remotely to the one race between which and her own there existed in her mind for ever and ever an absolutely fixed and irremovable barrier!
So Nora, too, lay awake all night; and all night long she thought but of one thing and one person—the solitary man she could never, never, never conceivably marry.
And Harry, for his part, thinking to himself, on his tumbled pillow, at Savannah Garden, said to his own heart over and over and over again: ‘I shall love her for ever; I can never while I live leave off loving her. But after what occurred yesterday and last night, I mustn’t dream for worlds of asking her a third time. I know now what it was she meant when she spoke about the barrier between us. Poor girl! how very wild of her! How strange that she should think in her own soul a Dupuy of Trinidad superior in position to one of the ancient Lincolnshire Noels!’
For pride always sees everything from its own point of view alone, and never for a moment succeeds in admitting to itself the pride of others as being equally reasonable and natural with its own.
SOME PET LIZARDS.
BY CATHERINE C. HOPLEY.
Those who live near commons and turfy heaths may in the spring-time espy the lizards peeping cautiously out from among the weeds to court the sunshine after their winter’s sleep; or, on a warm day, boldly flitting across the grass, but hiding again on the slightest alarm. Much may the amateur naturalist find to interest and amuse him in these tiny lizards; to admire also, for their colours are often very beautiful, their eyes bright and watchful, their form and actions anything but ungraceful. Among these native lizards, the Slow-worm (Anguis fragilis) is included—the ‘deaf adder’ or ‘blindworm,’ as it is commonly but wrongly called. As a pet, Anguis fragilis has many recommendations. Small, clean, unobtrusive, inoffensive, and easily fed, are more than can be said of most pets: domestic qualifications which, indeed, may be extended to its little four-legged cousins, the British lizards, often found in the same habitat, and all of which can be caught and transferred to a large glass bowl with ease and satisfaction. One of the bell-shaped glasses with a perforated knob at the top answers capitally. Reversed and furnished with moss, turf, and sand, the hole serves for drainage, because water is indispensable for the lizards, and the moss and turf should be sprinkled occasionally. A stand into which the reversed glass fits can be purchased with it, and a large china plate completes the arrangement, which, with its pretty occupants, is an ornament for any window or conservatory.
By an accident, I soon discovered that a slow-worm—my first and then only pet reptile—requires water. Knowing that it fed on slugs, I was hunting in the garden, and at length found some small ones under a flower-pot saucer, and conveyed them undisturbed to a place in the cage. The slow-worm soon discovered the addition, but instead of selecting a slug for supper, began to lick the cold, damp saucer, putting out its tongue repeatedly, as if refreshed; and forthwith the saucer was reversed and filled with the beverage, which the little reptile soon lapped eagerly, continuing to do so for some minutes. After this discovery, fresh water was supplied daily. That little creature became quickly tamed, a fact which her history will easily explain.
‘Do you want a live viper?’ a friend in the Reading Room of the British Museum asked me, one day.
‘A viper! Here?’