"
"Rose," demanded Helene, in a low aside, but with a tragic countenance,
"you surely are not going to leave me?"
The girl laughed as she accepted Mr. Elmsley's proffered assistance
from one vehicle into the other. "Why, you are quite a grown woman,"
observed that gentleman, apparently much impressed by her mature
proportions, "and it seems like only the other day that you were seven
years old, and used to kiss me when we met."
"Well, I'll kiss you again," replied the saucy Rose, adding after a
moment's pause,--"when I am seven years old."
"I warn you, Mrs. Elmsley," said Edward, shaking his head with doleful
foreboding, "that girl knows how to look like the innocent flower she
is named after, and be the serpent under it."
"Did you know," said his slandered sister, addressing the same lady,
and indicating the pair she had basely forsaken, "those are the very
two that were with me when I was so badly hurt last summer. Do you
wonder that I am glad to escape from them?"
The party drove off amid jests and laughter, while the young ladies,
applying their lips once more to a leaf of grass-ribbon each had in
her hand, produced such sounds as, according to their father, might,
Orpheus-like, have drawn stones and brickbats after them, but from a
murderous rather than a magnetic motive.
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