“If Teazer will let you,” laughed Conny.
I whispered, “Would you care if Teazer didn’t let me?”
She hung her head and smiled. Her mamma was looking at us; having, I believe, overheard my question.
“Do you mean yes or no, Conny?”
She honoured me with a look; a full, deep, inscrutable look. The blue of her eyes was as fathomless as the blue of the heavens—and as expressionless. However, my heart found the meaning it wanted in them; and if my aunt hadn’t been watching, I should have grown demonstrative.
My uncles were a long time absent. “What can they be doing?” my aunt kept on exclaiming.
“Talking over business matters, no doubt,” I replied.
Conny went to the piano and began to play; and when she was in the middle of one of those fantasias, which you can only submit to listen to when they are played by the girl you love, the two old gentlemen entered. My aunt challenged them pretty briskly, and sarcastically expressed her surprise to see them.
“Really,” said she, “I quite expected every moment to hear you ring for breakfast.”
“Tut, tut!” cried my uncle Dick, who was in boisterous good spirits. “We have been settling the affairs of nations, and arranging the succession of dynasties.”