“Faugh!” cried my aunt.
Conny ran out into the garden. I was going to follow her, when she came back holding a rosebud.
“Put that in my hair,” said she, “and let me see what taste you have.”
I ought to have possessed Uncle Toby’s simplicity when he looked into the Widow Wadman’s eye, and attended earnestly to what I was about, instead of thinking of other things, for then, perhaps, I should have pleased her. As it was, I put the rose in the wrong place, when she whipped it out, and smartly bade me try again.
My aunt looked delighted: my uncle amused.
“Where will you have it?” I enquired.
“In the right place, of course,” she replied.
“Well, then,” said I, “don’t face the glass, but be good enough to look at me.”
You may believe I took some time in satisfying myself; putting the rose now on one side, now on the other side, stepping elegantly backwards to inspect her sweet face, touching with reverent fingers her golden locks, and twisting them round and round my heart in so complicated a mesh, that the fly whom a spider has spun upon its sticky threads is not a securer prisoner; until my uncle, losing patience, cried out,
“Come, let us have tea, or we shall be late for church.”