e other bank to-night."

"Fireworks for Mayday?"

"Yes, to be sure. Wait and see."

"It would be so pleasant!" pleaded Lu.

"And a band, I forgot to mention. I have an engagement myself, so you'll
excuse me; but the girls will do the honors, and I shall meet you at
dinner."

So it was arranged. Papa went out. I curled up on a lounge,--for Lu
wouldn't have liked to be left, if I had liked to leave her,--and soon,
when he sat down by her quite across the room, I half shut my eyes and
pretended to sleep. He began to turn over her work-basket, taking up her
thimble, snipping at the thread with her scissors: I see now he wasn't
thinking about it, and was trying to recover what he considered a proper
state of feeling, but I fancied he was very gentle and tender, though I
couldn't hear what they said, and I never took the trouble to listen in
my life. In about five minutes I was tired of this playing 'possum, and
took my observations.

What is your idea of a Louise? Mine is dark eyes, dark hair, decided
features, pale, brown pale, with a mole on the left cheek,--and that's
Louise. Nothing striking, but pure and clear, and growing always better.

For him,--he's not one of those cliff-like men against whom you are
blown as a feather, I don't fancy that kind; I can stand of myself, rule
myself. He isn't small, though; no, he's tall enough, but all his frame
is delicate, held to earth by nothing but the cords of a strong will,
--very little body, very much soul. He, too, is pale, and has dark eyes
with violet darks in them. You don't call him beautiful in the least,
but you don't know him. I call him beauty itself, and I know him
thoroughly. A stranger might have thought, when I spoke of those copals
Rose carved, that Rose was some girl. But though he has a feminine
sensibility, like Correggio or Schubert, nobody could call him womanish.
"_Les races se feminisent_." Don't you remember Matthew Roydon's
Astrophill?

"A sweet, attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face."

I always think of that flame in an alabaster vase, when I see him; "one
sweet grace fed still with one sweet mind"; a countenance of another
sphere: that's Vaughan Rose. It provokes me that I can't paint him
myself, without other folk's words; but you see there's no natural image
of him in me, and so I can't throw it strongly on any canvas. As for his
manners, you've seen them;--now tell me, was there eve