to serve me, and when I want something
definite of you, you go off into the Byronic, or the Platonic, or what
you would perhaps call the humorous: it is not easy to discriminate
them. Once for all, will you do as I bid you, or not?"

When the Princess wants to bring a man to book, he has to come there,
and stay there till he sees a favorable opening for a break: there was
none such just now. So I called in the white-winged coursers of my too
exuberant fancy, locked them up in the barn, begged the lady's pardon as
usual, and composed myself into an attitude of respectful and devout
attention, as if I were in church. It was not long after dinner: I
wanted to have some more fun, but that did not seem to be just the time
and place for it. My preceptress eyed me sternly, and waxed anew the
thread of her discourse.

"I told you that my actions might appear strange to your ignorance. I
will tell you now what my plan is, so far as is necessary for your
guidance: then perhaps you will have sense enough not to go gaping
about, but to fall into line and do what is required of you. I have
determined to see very little of this Mr. Hartman--"

"O now, Clarice! After you promised! I relied on you--"

"Be still, stupid, and hear me out. I shall see but little of him at
first. You have made such an ado about the man, I am disposed to be
interested in him, for your sake. There, that will do; let my hand
be."--I was merely pressing it a little, I assure you, to testify my
gratitude for this unusual consideration: I don't know when she ever
owned to doing a thing for my sake before. "For your sake first, you
great baby, and then, if he is worth it, for his own. But at the start,
as I told you, I must look him over; and that I can do best at a little
distance."

"And then you mean to take him in and do for him? You can, of course;
but, Princess dear, be merciful--for my sake first, and then, if he is
worth it, for his own. Don't grind him up too fine: leave pieces of him
big enough to be recognized and collected by his weeping friends."

"Robert, you really ought to try to restrain your native coarseness.
What can a man like you know of the motives and intentions of a woman
like me? Poor child, if I were to put them before you in the plainest
terms the facts and the dictionary allow, you could not understand
them."

As a quartz-crusher the Princess could have won fame and fortune. I hope
she may not pulverize Hartman as effectually