"You know that he loves you!"

"Do-o-n't!" pleaded Miss POTTS, nervously. "You'll make me fidgetty
again, just thinking of to-night. It was too perfectly absurd."

"What was?"

"Why, _he_ was,--Mr. BUMSTEAD. It gave me the funniest feeling! It was
as though some one was trying to see through you, you know."

"My child!" exclaimed Miss PENDRAGON, dropping her cheek-distenders upon
the bureau, "you speak strangely. Has that man gained any power over
you?"

"No, dear," returned FLORA, wiping off a part of her left eyebrow with
cold cream. "But didn't you see? He was looking right down my throat all
the time I was singing, until it actually tickled me!"

"Does he always do so?"

"Oh, I don't know what he always does!" whimpered the nervous Flowerpot.
"Oh, he's such an utterly ridiculous creature! Sometimes when we're in
company together, and I smell cloves, and look at him, I think that I
see the lid of his right eye drop over the ball and tremble at me in the
strangest manner. And sometimes his eyes seem fixed motionless in his
head, as they did to-night, and he'll appear to wander off into a kind
of dream, and feel about in the air with his right arm as though he
wanted to hug somebody. Oh! my throat begins to tickle again! Oh, stay
with me, and be my absurdly ridiculous friend!"