"Very sweet, I grant you, and very flavorless," returned Rosa. "And
alarmingly apt to turn sour upon the stomach. I had rather be fed
upon pepper lozenges."

"You should have been born in the Spice Islands," said the hostess,
tapping the dark cheek with her fore finger. "But we could not spare
you from our wassail-cup to-night, my dear Lady Pimento!"

She bent slightly, that the flattery might reach no other ear. She
may not have known that Rosa's Creole skin was at a wretched
disadvantage, as seen against the green silk background; but others
noticed it, and thought how few complexions were comparable to the
wearer's. She had the faculty of converting into a foil nearly every
woman who approached her.

"Thank you! So I am pimento, am I?" queried Rosa, pertly. "And each
of us is to personate some condiment--sweet, ardent, or aromatic--in
the exhilarating draught! Which shall Mr. Harrison here be?

"'Cinnamon or ginger, nutmeg or cloves?'"

"That is a line of a college drinking-song!"

The speaker was a young man of eight-and-twenty; who sat between
Rosa and Mabel, and whose attentions to the latter were marked. Of
medium height, with sandy hair and whiskers, high cheek-bones, that
gave a Gaelic cast to his physiognomy; which was remarkable for
nothing in particular when at rest, and followed somewhat tardily
the operations of his mind when he talked, he would probably have
been the least likely person present to rivet a stranger's notice