hey laughed and applauded; but the ladies were silent after
the performance, until the moment came to thank her for the entertainment
she had afforded them: and then they broke into gentle smiles, and
trusted they might have the pleasure of hearing her another night.

"Oh! just as often and as much as you like," she said, and first held her
hand to Arabella, next to Cornelia, and then to Adela. She seemed to be
hesitating before the gentlemen, and when Wilfrid raised his hat, she was
put to some confusion, and bowed rather awkwardly, and retired.

"Good night, miss!" called Mr. Pericles.

"Good night, sir!" she answered from a little distance, and they could
see that she was there emboldened to drop a proper curtsey in
accompaniment.

Then the ladies stood together and talked of her, not with absolute
enthusiasm. For, "Was it not divine?" said Adela; and Cornelia asked her
if she meant the last piece; and, "Oh, gracious! not that!" Adela
exclaimed. And then it was discovered how their common observation had
fastened on the boot-lace; and this vagrant article became the key to
certain speculations on her condition and character.

"I wish I'd had a dozen bouquets, that's all!" cried Wilfrid. "she
deserved them."

"Has she sentiment for what she sings? or is it only faculty?" Cornelia
put it to Mr. Sumner.

That gentleman faintly defended the stranger for the intrusion of the
bumpkin tune. "She did it so well!" he said.

"I complain that she did it too well," uttered Cornelia, whose use of
emphasis customarily implied that the argument remained with her.

Talking in this manner, and leisurely marching homeward, they were
startled to hear Mr. Pericles, who had wrapped himself impenetrably in
the bear, burst from his cogitation suddenly to cry out, in his harshest
foreign accent: "Yeaz!" And thereupon he threw open the folds, and laid
out a forefinger, and delivered himself: "I am made my mind! I send her
abroad to ze Academie for one, two, tree year. She shall be instructed as
was not before. Zen a noise at La Scala. No--Paris! No--London! She shall
astonish London fairst.--Yez! if I take a theatre! Yez! if I buy a
newspaper! Yez! if I pay feefty-sossand pound!"

His singular outlandish vehemence, and the sweeping grandeur of a
determination that lightly assumed the corruptibility of our Press, sent
a smile circling among the ladies and gentlemen. The youth who had wished
to throw the fair unknown a dozen bouquet