"Oh! Mr.Corey! Why didn't you say Mr.Corey if you meant Mr.Corey? If I meant Mr.Corey, I should say Mr.Corey.
It isn't swearing! Corey, Corey, Co----"
Her sister clapped her hand over her mouth "Will you HUSH, you wretched thing?" she whimpered."The whole house can hear you.""Oh yes, they can hear me all over the square.
Well, I think he looked well enough for a plain youth, who hadn't taken his hair out of curl-papers for some time.""It WAS clipped pretty close," Irene admitted; and they both laughed at the drab effect of Mr.Corey's skull, as they remembered it."Did you like his nose?"asked Irene timorously.
"Ah, now you're COMING to something," said Penelope.
"I don't know whether, if I had so much of a nose, I should want it all Roman.""I don't see how you can expect to have a nose part one kind and part another," argued Irene.
"Oh, I do.Look at mine!" She turned aside her face, so as to get a three-quarters view of her nose in the glass, and crossing her hands, with the brush in one of them, before her, regarded it judicially."Now, my nose started Grecian, but changed its mind before it got over the bridge, and concluded to be snub the rest of the way.""You've got a very pretty nose, Pen," said Irene, joining in the contemplation of its reflex in the glass.
"Don't say that in hopes of getting me to compliment HIS, Mrs."--she stopped, and then added deliberately--"C.!"Irene also had her hair-brush in her hand, and now she sprang at her sister and beat her very softly on the shoulder with the flat of it."You mean thing!"she cried, between her shut teeth, blushing hotly.
"Well, D., then," said Penelope."You've nothing to say against D.? Though I think C.is just as nice an initial.""Oh!" cried the younger, for all expression of unspeakable things.
"I think he has very good eyes," admitted Penelope.
"Oh, he HAS! And didn't you like the way his sackcoat set? So close to him, and yet free--kind of peeling away at the lapels?""Yes, I should say he was a young man of great judgment.
He knows how to choose his tailor."
Irene sat down on the edge of a chair."It was so nice of you, Pen, to come in, that way, about clubs.""Oh, I didn't mean anything by it except opposition,"said Penelope."I couldn't have father swelling on so, without saying something.""How he did swell!" sighed Irene."Wasn't it a relief to have mamma come down, even if she did seem to be all stocking at first?"The girls broke into a wild giggle, and hid their faces in each other's necks."I thought I SHOULD die,"said Irene.
"'It's just like ordering a painting,'" said Penelope, recalling her father's talk, with an effect of dreamy absent-mindedness."'You give the painter money enough, and he can afford to paint you a first-class picture.
Give an architect money enough, and he'll give you a first-class house, every time.'""Oh, wasn't it awful!" moaned her sister."No one would ever have supposed that he had fought the very idea of an architect for weeks, before he gave in."Penelope went on."'I always did like the water side of Beacon,--long before I owned property there.
When you come to the Back Bay at all, give me the water side of Beacon.'""Ow-w-w-w!" shrieked Irene."DO stop!"
The door of their mother's chamber opened below, and the voice of the real Colonel called, "What are you doing up there, girls? Why don't you go to bed?"This extorted nervous shrieks from both of them.
The Colonel heard a sound of scurrying feet, whisking drapery, and slamming doors.Then he heard one of the doors opened again, and Penelope said, "I was only repeating something you said when you talked to Mr.Corey.""Very well, now," answered the Colonel."You postpone the rest of it till to-morrow at breakfast, and see that you're up in time to let ME hear it."
