identification, as I have a red and white stripe painted on my steamer
baggage? Really that isn't necessary. Can you imagine losing cousin
Harriet? Augustus Cowden mislaying her, for example; and only recovering
her with joyful cries--we take those for granted in his case, of
course--at sight of the violet ink? Not a bit of it. You know as well as
I do identification marks can't ever be required to secure her return,
because under no conceivable circumstances could she ever be lost. She is
there, dear lady, lock, stock, and barrel, right there all the time. So
her raiment of violet amounts to a purely gratuitous advertisement of a
permanently self-evident fact.--And such a shade too, such a positively
excruciating shade!"

But here a movement upon the terrace served, indirectly, to put a term to
his patter. For Sir Charles Verity, raising his voice slightly in passing
emphasis, turned and moved slowly towards the little company gathered at
the tea-table. His two companions followed, the shorter of them
apparently making answer, the words echoing clearly in genial richness of
affirmation across the intervening space--"And so it was, General, am I
not recalling the incident myself? Indeed you're entirely right."

"Come," Damaris said, with a certain brevity as of command.

"And feel a worm?"

"No--come and speak to my father."

"Ah! I shall feel a worm there too," the young man returned, an engaging
candour in his smiling countenance; "and with far better reason, unless I
am greatly mistaken."