Anna shook her head laughingly, while Gerald muttered—-
“Salmon are caught with gay flies.”
They closed round the tea-table while Marilda sighed—-
“Alda’s daughters are not like herself.”
“A different generation,” said Geraldine.
“See the Beggars Opera,” said Lance—-
“’I wonder any
man alive will ever rear a daughter,
For when she’s
drest with care and cost, and made all neat and gay,
As men should
serve a cucumber, she throws herself away.’”
“Ah! your time has not come yet, Lance.
Your little girls are at a comfortable age.”
“There are different ways of throwing oneself
away,” said Clement. “Perhaps each
generation says it of the next.”
“Emmie is not throwing herself away, except
her chances,” said Marilda. “If
she would only think of poor Ferdy Brown, who is as
good a fellow as ever lived!”
“Not much chance of that,” said Geraldine.
Their eyes all met as each had glanced at the tea-table,
where Emilia and Gerald were looking over a report
together, but Geraldine shook her head. She
was sure that Gerald did not think of his cousins
otherwise than as sisters, but she was by no means
equally sure of Emilia, to whom he was certainly a
hero.
Anna had not heard the last of the season. Her
mother wrote to her, and also to Geraldine, whom she
piteously entreated not to let Anna lose another chance,
in the midst of her bloom, when she could get good
introductions, and Marilda would do all she could for
her.
But Anna was obdurate. She should never see
any one in society like Uncle Clem. She had
had a taste two years ago, and she wished for no more.
She should see the best pictures at the studios before
leaving town, and she neither could nor would leave
her uncle and aunt to themselves. So the matter
remained in abeyance till the place of sojourn had
been selected and tried; and meantime Gerald spent
what remained of the Easter vacation in a little of
exhibitions with Anna, a little of slumming with Emilia,
a little of society impartially with swells and artists,
and a good deal of amiable lounging and of modern
reading of all kinds. His aunt watched, enjoyed,
yet could not understand, his uncle said, that he
was an undeveloped creature.
Such trifles will their hearts engage,
A shell, a flower, a feather;
If none of these, a cup of joy
It is to be together.—-Isaac Williams.
A retired soldier, living with his sister in a watering-place,
is apt to form to himself regular habits, of which
one of the most regular is the walking to the station
in quest of his newspaper. Here, then, it was
that the tall, grey-haired, white-moustached General
Mohun beheld, emerging on the platform, a slight figure
in a grey suit, bag in hand, accompanied by a pretty
pink-cheeked, fair-haired, knicker-bockered little
boy, whose air of content and elation at being father’s
companion made his sapphire eyes goodly to behold.
