"You,—graceless girl!" said my mother. "It's no bridal veil will ever cross your curls!"
"Surely, mother, we've said too much,—you'll overlook old scores."
"'T is hard forgetting, when a perverse child puts the hand to her own hurt."
"No hurt to me. You would not have had me take a man at his word when he recked not what he said."
"Tsh! Tsh! Charles Seavern would have married you. And with the two brothers gone, he's an earl now,—and you flung him off. Tsh!"
"I never saw the time, mother, solemnly as I've told you, when his right hand knew what his left hand did,—what with his champagne-suppers, your Burgundy, and Johnny Graeme's Jamaica. He'd have been sorely shocked to wake up sober in his earldom some fine morning and find a countess beside him ready-made to his hand."
"You spared him!" said my mother. And in a minute she added, softwise,
"Ay, were that all!"
"Ah," said Mary, "but I'll take the next one that asks me, if it's only to save myself the taunts at home! You thought you were winning to a soft nest, children, where there were nought but larks and thrushes and maybe nightingales,—and we're all cuckoos.
"'Cuckoo! cuckoo! sweet voice of Spring,
Without you sad the year had been,
The vocal heavens your welcome ring,
The hedge-rows ope and take you in,
Cuckoo! cuckoo!
"'Cuckoo! cuckoo! O viewless sprite,
Your song enchants the sighing South,
It wooes the wild-flower to the light,
And curls the smile round my love's mouth,
Cuckoo! cuckoo!'"