“The Kreutzer Sonata!” he ejaculated at Charley, and disappeared.
At this the two girls fairly giggled aloud, and, darting Parthian glances at Alice, tumbled through the hall into the parlor.
“What merry, thoughtless creatures we girls are!” said Alice, removing her gaze from the specks of sails.
“Yes, and no fellow can find out, half the time, what you are laughing about,—or thinking about, for the matter of that.”
“What! do you deem us such riddles,—you who, they say, can read one’s thoughts as though we were made of glass?”
“I? And who says that of me, pray?”
“Everybody says it. I say it,” she added, with a smile of saucy defiance.
“I read people’s thoughts!”
“Do you disclaim the gift?”
“Even to disclaim it would be preposterously vain.”