Edith turned from the window, where she had stood to read her letter, folded her arms up over her head, and said to Dick Rowan, sitting there, “Can you fancy me supporting an entablature?”
“No,” he answered; “for then there would have to be others like you.”
Edith blushed, and dropped her arms; for they were all looking at her, and their faces, as well as Dick Rowan’s answer, reminded her that she was beautiful. She gave him her letter to read, and went to sit on the window-sill beside Clara, and listen to the talk of the three gentlemen on the piazza. The two families were dining together that day, and Mr. Yorke, with his son-in-law, and Captain Cary, were smoking their cigars outside. Inside the window nearest her husband, Mrs. Cleaveland sat in a low, broad arm-chair. A nurse in a white cap had just placed on her knees Hester’s second son, an infant of six months old. As it lay slowly and deliciously waking up, both nurse and mother gazed down upon it with adoring eyes. Master Philip,
this baby’s predecessor, was hiding his face in one arm of his mother’s arm-chair, being in temporary disgrace. Original sin was very strong and active in this child. He was full of vitality and determination, and just at that age when will is pretty well developed, and memory and understanding still dormant—the age for childish atrocities. There were moments when the child’s life was a burden to him, by reason of the great number of things which he wished to do, and meant to do, and could not remember that he must not do. He had a chronic desire to pull out the baby’s eyelashes, “eye-winkeys,” he called them, and to make it smile in season and out by violently drawing the corners of its mouth round toward its ears. Whenever an infantine shriek was heard, it was always understood that Master Philip was in some way accountable. Another fancy of his was to poke holes in paper, or any delicate and easily perforated fabric, with his plump forefinger. He could have no greater pleasure than to seat himself, with some precious volume before him, and go gravely and industriously through it in this way, leaf by leaf, from cover to cover. There was, indeed, a long list of indictments against this unhappy child. The two little forefingers tied together behind his back, and a dilapidated book lying on the carpet, showed plainly enough what his offence was at this time.
In the background, Carl was telling marvellous stories to the culprit’s half-brother, Eugene; and Mrs. Yorke and Milicent, in the centre of the room, were coaxing some account of his adventures from Dick Rowan. He had to be persuaded before he would speak much of himself.
“Isn’t he magnificent?” Clara whispered to Edith, meaning Captain Cary.
The sailor had been describing an arrowy little craft, the Humming-bird, in which he had once darted in and out of the Chinese coast, smuggling opium in the very teeth of an English man-of-war. Seeing the addition to his audience, he threw the end of his cigar away, and moved his chair nearer the window.
“How I should like to be a sailor!” exclaimed Clara with enthusiasm.
Captain Cary leaned forward, with his arms on his knees, in order to bring himself more on a level with the young ladies. “And how would you like to be a sailor’s wife?” he asked.
Although he had the greatest possible admiration for Miss Clara Yorke, and considered her by far the cleverest young woman he had ever known, it would be safe to say that the thought of going any further than that had never entered his mind, till he saw the flash of eyes and color with which she received his question. The effect was electrical. He straightened himself up again, and, in the first break of that possibility, did not hear her saucy but rather tardy reply: “That depends on who the sailor is.”