grave and reverend scholars stare at pretty
paroquets, but I won't belittle Salemina's exquisite and peculiar charm
by worrying over the matter.

'Wirra, wirra! Ologone!
Can't ye lave a lad alone,
Till he's proved there's no tradition left of any other girl--
Not even Trojan Helen,
In beauty all excellin'--
Who's been up to half the divilment of Fan Fitzgerl?'

Of course Francesca's heart is fixed upon Ronald Macdonald, but that
fact has not altered the glance of her eyes. They no longer say,
'Wouldn't you like to fall in love with me, if you dared?' but they
still have a gleam that means, 'Don't fall in love with me; it is no
use!' And of the two, one is about as dangerous as the other, and each
has something of 'Fan Fitzgerl's divilment.

'Wid her brows of silky black
Arched above for the attack,
Her eyes they dart such azure death on poor admiring man;
Masther Cupid, point your arrows,
From this out, agin the sparrows,
For you're bested at Love's archery by young Miss Fan.'

Of course Himself never fell a prey to Francesca's fascinations, but
then he is not susceptible; you could send him off for a ten-mile drive
in the moonlight with Venus herself, and not be in the least anxious.

Dr. La Touche is grey for his years, tall and spare in frame, and there
are many lines of anxiety or thought in his forehead; but a wonderful
smile occasionally smooths them all out, and gives his face a rare
though transient radiance. He looks to me as if he had loved too many
books and too few people; as if he had tried vainly to fill his heart
and life with antiquities, which of all things, perhaps, are the most
bloodless, the least warming and nourishing when taken in excess or as
a steady diet. Himself (God bless him!) shall never have that patient
look, if I can help it; but how it will appeal to Salemina! There are
women who are born to be petted and served, and there are those who seem
born to serve others. Salemina's first idea is always to make tangled
things smooth (like little Broona's curly hair); to bring sweet and
discreet order out of chaos; to prune and graft and water and weed and
tend things, until they blossom for very shame under her healing touch.
Her mind is catholic, well ordered, and broad,--for ever full of other
people's interests, never of her own: and her heart always seems to
me like some dim, sweet-scented guest-chamber in an old New England
ma