“For Heaven’s sake do not make me laugh! do not!” cry I, nervously, “it would be too dreadful if I were to receive his overtures with a broad grin, would not it?  There! is it gone?  Do I look quite grave?”

I take half a dozen hurried turns along the floor, and try to think of all our most depressing family themes—­father; Algy’s college-bills; Tou Tou’s shrunk face and thin legs; nothing will do.  When I stop before the glass and consult it, that hysterical smile is there still.

“Do you remember the day, when we were children, that we all went to the dentist?” says the Brat, chuckling, “and father gave Bobby a New Testament because he had his eye-tooth out?  Does to-day at all remind you of it, Nancy?”

“I had far rather have both my eye-teeth out, and several of my double ones, too,” reply I, sincerely.

A little pause.

“I must not keep him waiting any longer,” cry I, desperately.  “Tell me!” (appealing piteously to them all), “do I look all right? do I look pretty natural?”

“You do not look middle-aged enough,” says Bobby, bluntly.

“Put on your bonnet,” suggests Algy.  “You look twenty years older in that, particularly when you cock it well over your nose, as you did last Sunday.”

“You are all very unkind!” say I, in a whimpering voice, walking toward the door.

“And if he becomes too demonstrative,” says the Brat, overtaking me with a rush before I reach it, “say—­

  ‘Unhand me, graybeard loon!’”

Then I go.  As I know perfectly well, that if I give myself time to think, I shall stand with the drawing-room door-handle in my grasp for half an hour, before I can make up my mind to enter, I take the bull by the horns, and whisking in suddenly and noisily, find myself tete-a-tete with my lover.

Certainly, I never felt such a fool in my life.  How awful it will be if I burst out laughing in his face!  It is quite as likely as not that I shall do it out of sheer hysterical fright.  Oh, how different! how much nicer it was when we last parted!  I had taken him to see the jackdaw, and the little bear that Bobby brought from foreign parts; and jacky had bitten his finger so humorously, and we had been so merry, and I had told him again how much I wished that he could change places with father.  And now! I feel—­more than see—­that he is drawing nigh me.  Through my eyelids—­for I am very sure that I never lift my eyes—­get an idea of his appearance.

Under his present aspect I am much more disposed to be critical, and to pick holes in him, than I was under his former one.  Any attempt at youthfulness, any effort at smartness, will not escape my vigilant reprobation—­down-eyed and red-cheeked as I appear to be.  But none such do I find.  There is no false juvenility—­there is no trace of dandyism in the plain and quiet clothes, in the hair sparsely sprinkled with snow, in the mature and goodly face.