edly)--had a
habit of getting away from the city, early in the season, to one of the
watering-places or some cool retreat in the country; but this year
perhaps the illness of Richard Crawford had something to do with
retaining at least the daughter late in town. "The house can get along
well enough--it is _you_ that is to be taken care of, and I should like
to know, Dick Crawford, how any body is going to do it if you do not
manage to moderate your transports and lie still when you have not
strength to do any thing else!"

How her tongue ran on, and what a tongue she had! Not a bit of sting in
it, except when she was fully aroused to anger, and then it would
suddenly develope the faculty of morally flaying her victim alive, with
words of indignation that tumbled over each other without calculation or
order, in the effort to escape the tears of vexation that were sure to
follow close behind. At such moments Joe's tongue was actually cruel,
though without premeditation; at other times it was simply a very rapid
and noisy tongue, that spoke very sweet words most of the time and
exercised an influence all around it that no one could attempt to
describe. But perhaps the tongue was not alone concerned in the matter.
There may have been something in the rather tall and lithe form--the
brown cheek with a dash of color shining through it the moment she was
in the least degree warmed or excited--the eyes dark but sunny, wavering
between hazel brown and Irish gray, and the most difficult eyes in the
world to look into and yet keep your head--the profile uneven and
partially spoiled by the nose being decidedly pert, retrousse and too
small for the other features--the pouting red lips that never seemed to
fade and grow pale as the lips of so many American women do before one
half their sweetness has been extracted by the human bee--the wealth of
glossy black hair, coming down on the low forehead and plainly swept
back in the Madonna fashion over a face that otherwise had the purity
and goodness of the Madonna in it, but very little of her
devotion,--perhaps there was something in all this, besides the
influence of her flood-tide of language, to make Josephine Harris the
delight, the botheration and the absolute tyrant of more than half the
persons with whom she was thrown in contact. Perhaps there was even more
than all, to those with whom she came into closer intercourse, in the
breath that always seemed as if it came over a bank o