to turn my arbor into a reading-room, and is often to be found
there of mornings with one of Sir Walter's novels. Sometimes I
leave her alone, sometimes lie on the bench facing her, while she
reads aloud, or, tiring, prattles. Little half-fledged spirit, to
whom the yard is the earth and June eternity, but who peeps over
the edge of the nest at the chivalry of the ages, and fancies that
she knows the world. The other day, as we were talking, she tapped
the edge of her _Ivanhoe_ with a slate-pencil--for she is also
studying the Greatest Common Divisor--and said, warningly, "You
must not make epigrams; for if you succeeded you would be brilliant,
and everything brilliant is tiresome."

"Who is your authority for _that_ epigram, Miss Sylvia?" I said,
laughing.

"Don't you suppose that I have any ideas but what I get from books?"

"You may have all wisdom, but those sayings proceed only from
experience."

"I have my intuitions; they are better than experience."

"If you keep on, _you_ will be making epigrams presently, and then
I shall find you tiresome, and go away."

"You couldn't. I am your guest. How unconventional I am to come
over and sit in your arbor! But it is Georgiana's fault."

"Did _she_ tell you to come?"