“He is a married man,” said I.
“Say not so!” cried Alice, with a tragic air.
“But his wife’s dead,” I added.
“I breathe again!” intoned Alice, in the same vein.
“Oh, Alice!” said Lucy, with gentle reproachfulness.
“Why, of course, Lucy,” began Alice, throwing herself into an argumentative attitude, “of course I do not really rejoice at the poor woman’s death; but how can you expect me to grieve over a person I never—”
“You are a greater scamp than ever,” said Lucy, laughingly stopping her friend’s mouth with her hand.
The little architect felt that some one stood behind her, and, turning her head and judging with that unerring infantile instinct that he was a friend, she gave him a number of those irresistible little looks, with which every one is familiar, half coy, half coquettish, which showed that, young though she was, her name was woman. Ladies at her time of life do not appreciate the necessity of introductions as preliminary to conversation with gentlemen.
“Build me a house!” cried she to the stranger, running towards him and looking now into his face, now at her blocks, with a smile half expectation, half timidity.
“I build you a house? Why, certainly, little brown eyes!”—taking her plump cheeks between his hands and gazing down into her upturned face with a smile that was singularly tender and bright; and all the more striking, as it gleamed forth with something of the suddenness of a flash of sunlight bursting through a cloud. It had been easy to see, indeed, as he approached us more nearly, that his preoccupations were not of a pleasant character. His slightly compressed lips imparted a shade of grimness to his look, and the mingled expression of weariness and resolution upon his features seemed to reveal some struggle going on in his breast.