to answer for; what a long reckoning of tender
speeches, of soft looks, of pressed hands, lies at your door! What an
incentive to flirtation is the wily imp who turns ever and anon from his
careless gambols to throw his laughter-loving eyes upon you, calling up the
mantling blush to both your cheeks! He seems to chronicle the hours of your
dalliance, making your secrets known unto each other. We have gone through
our share of flirtation in this life: match-making mothers, prying aunts,
choleric uncles, benevolent and open-hearted fathers, we understand to the
life, and care no more for such man-traps than a Melton man, well mounted
on his strong-boned thorough-bred, does for a four-barred ox-fence that
lies before him. Like him, we take them flying; never relaxing the slapping
stride of our loose gallop, we go straight ahead, never turning aside,
except for a laugh at those who flounder in the swamps we sneer at. But we
confess honestly, we fear the little, brother, the small urchin who, with
nankeen trousers and three rows of buttons, performs the part of Cupid. He
strikes real terror into our heart; he it is who, with a cunning wink or
sly smile, seems to confirm the soft nonsense we are weaving; by some
slight gesture he seems to check off the long reckoning of our attentions,
bringing us every moment nearer to the time when the score must be settled
and the debt paid. He it is who, by a memory delightfully oblivious of
his task and his table-book, is tenacious to the life of what you said
to Fanny; how you put your head under Lucy's bonnet; he can imitate to
perfection the way you kneeled upon the grass; and the wretch has learned
to smack his lips like a _gourmand_, that he, may convey another stage of
your proceeding.

Oh, for infant schools for everything under the age of ten! Oh, for
factories for the children of the rich! The age of prying curiosity is from
four-and-a-half to nine, and Fonche himself might get a lesson in _police_
from an urchin in his alphabet.

I contrived soon, however, to forget the presence of even the little
brother. The night was falling; Baby appeared getting fatigued with her
walk, for she leaned somewhat more heavily upon my arm, and I--I cannot
tell wherefore--fell into that train of thinking aloud, which somehow, upon
a summer's eve, with a fair girl beside one, is the very nearest thing to
love-making.

"There, Charley, don't now--ah, don't! Do let go my hand; they are coming
dow