Alice, laughing.

"No," said Sam. "I think rather the contrary. Are you?"

"I have not had time to tell yet," she said. "I will see how you behave
at lunch, which we shall have in half an hour TETE-A-TETE. You have
been often here before, I believe? Do you see much change?"

"Not much. I noticed a new piano, and a little glove that I had never
seen before. Jim's menagerie o wild beasts is as numerous as ever, I
see. He would have liked to be in Noah's Ark."

"And so would you and I, Mr. Buckley," she answered, laughing, "if we
had been caught in the flood."

Good gracious! Think of being in Noah's Ark with her.

"You find them a little troublesome, don't you, Miss Brentwood?"

"Well, it requires a good deal of administrative faculty to keep the
kitten and the puppy from open collision, and to prevent the magpie
from pecking out the cockatoo's eye and hiding it in the flower bed.
Last Sunday morning he (the magpie) got into my father's room, and
stole thirty-one shillings and sixpence. We got it all back but half a
sovereign, and that we shall never see."

The bird thus alluded to broke into a gush of melody, so rich, full,
and metallic, that they both turned to look at him. Having attracted
attention, he began dancing, crooning a little song to himself, as
though he would say, "I know where it is." And lastly he puffed out his
breast, put back his bill, and swore two or three oaths that would have
disgraced a London scavenger, with such remarkable distinctness too,
that there was no misunderstanding him; so Sam's affectation of not
having caught what the bird said, was a dead failure.

"Mr. Buckley," said she, "if you will excuse me I will go and see about
lunch. Can you amuse yourself there for half an hour?" Well, he would
try. So he retired again to the rocking-chair, about ten years older
than when he rose from it. For he had grown from a boy into a man.

He had fallen over head and ears in love, and all in five minutes,
fallen deeply, seriously in love, to the exclusion of all other
sublunary matters, before he had well had time to notice whether she
spoke with an Irish brogue or a Scotch (happily she did neither).
Sudden, you say: well, yes; but in lat. 34 degrees, and lower, whether
in the southern or northern hemisphere, these sort of affairs come on
with a rapidity and violence only equalled by the thunder-storms of
those regions, and utterly surprising to you who perhaps read this book
in 52 degree