a yard or two of silk and pin it to her dress when she goes out to walk, but let her unpin it before she goes into the house;—­there may be poor women that will think it worth disinfecting.  It is an insult to a respectable laundress to carry such things into a house for her to deal with.  I don’t like the Bloomers any too well,—­in fact, I never saw but one, and she—­or he, or it—­had a mob of boys after her, or whatever you call the creature, as if she had been a——­

The little gentleman stopped short,—­flushed somewhat, and looked round with that involuntary, suspicious glance which the subjects of any bodily misfortune are very apt to cast round them.  His eye wandered over the company, none of whom, excepting myself and one other, had, probably, noticed the movement.  They fell at last on Iris,—­his next neighbor, you remember.

—­We know in a moment, on looking suddenly at a person, if that person’s eyes have been fixed on us.  Sometimes we are conscious of it before we turn so as to see the person.  Strange secrets of curiosity, of impertinence, of malice, of love, leak out in this way.  There is no need of Mrs. Felix Lorraine’s reflection in the mirror, to tell us that she is plotting evil for us behind our backs.  We know it, as we know by the ominous stillness of a child that some mischief or other is going on.  A young girl betrays, in a moment, that her eyes have been feeding on the face where you find them fixed, and not merely brushing over it with their pencils of blue or brown light.

A certain involuntary adjustment assimilates us, you may also observe, to that upon which we look.  Roses redden the cheeks of her who stoops to gather them, and buttercups turn little people’s chins yellow.  When we look at a vast landscape, our chests expand as if we would enlarge to fill it.  When we examine a minute object, we naturally contract, not only our foreheads, but all our dimensions.  If I see two men wrestling, I wrestle too, with my limbs and features.  When a country-fellow comes upon the stage, you will see twenty faces in the boxes putting on the bumpkin expression.  There is no need of multiplying instances to reach this generalization; every person and thing we look upon puts its special mark upon us.  If this is repeated often enough, we get a permanent resemblance to it, or, at least, a fixed aspect which we took from it.  Husband and wife come to look alike at last, as has often been noticed.  It is a common saying of a jockey, that he is “all horse”; and I have often fancied that milkmen get a stiff, upright carriage, and an angular movement of the arm, that remind one of a pump and the working of its handle.

All this came in by accident, just because I happened to mention that the little gentleman found that Iris had been looking at him with her soul in her eyes, when his glance rested on her after wandering round the company.  What he thought, it is hard to say; but the shadow of suspicion faded off from his face, and he looked calmly into the amber eyes, resting his cheek upon the hand that wore the red jewel.