“Hush!” cries Barbara, gently pushing him away, and stretching out her hand to me.  She is the only one that understands. (Oh, why, why did I ever laugh at him with them?  What is there to laugh at in him?)

“My poor Barbara!” continues Algy, in a tone of affected solicitude.  “If you had not a tender brother to look after you, your young limbs might be cramped with rheumatism, and twitched with palsy, before any one would think of bringing you a cloak.”

“Wait a bit!” say I, recovering my good-humor with an effort, reflecting that it is no use to be vexed—­that they mean nothing—­and that, lastly, I have brought it on myself!

“Wait for what?” asks Barbara, laughing.  “Till Toothless Jack has grown used to his new teeth?”

“By-the-by,” cries Bobby, eagerly, “that was since you went away, Nancy:  he has set up a stock of new teeth—­beauties—­like Orient pearl—­he wore them in church last Sunday for the first time.  We tell Barbara that he has bought them on purpose to propose in.  Now, do not you think it looks promising?”

“We do not mean, however,” says Algy, lighting a cigar, “to let Barbara go cheap!  Now that we have disposed of you so advantageously, we are beginning to be rather ambitious even for Tou Tou”

“We think,” says Bobby, giving a friendly but severe pull to our youngest sister’s outspread yellow locks, “that Tou Tou would adorn the Church.  Bishops have mostly thin legs, so it is to be presumed that they admire them:  we destine Tou Tou for a bishop’s lady!”

Hereupon follows a lively fire of argument between Bobby and his sister; she protesting that she will not espouse a bishop, and he asseverating that she shall.  It lasts the best part of a quarter of hour, and ends by reducing Tou Tou to tears.

“But come,” says Algy, taking his cigar out of his mouth, throwing his head back, and blowing two columns of smoke out of his nose, “let us take up our subject again where we dropped it.  I should be really glad if I could get you to own that you and he”—­(indicating my husband by a jerk of his head)—­“grew rather sick of each other!  Whether you own it or not, I know you did; and it would give me pleasure to hear it.  You need not take it personally.  I assure you that it is no slur upon him—­ everybody does.  I have talked to lots of fellows who have gone through it, and they all say the same.”

“Nancy!” says Bobby, abandoning, at length, his persecution of Tou Tou, and pretending not to hear her last persevering assertion of her determination not to be episcopally wed—­“tell the truth, and shame the devil.  It would be different if we were strangers, but we that have sported with you since you wore frilled trousers and a bib—­come now—­ did you, or did you not, kneel three times a day, like the prophet Daniel, looking eastward or westward, or whichever way it did look, and yearn for us, and Jacky, and the bun-loaf—­come, now?”