But before it had fairly reached the water, poor Iris, who had followed
the conversation with a certain interest until it turned this sharp
corner, (for she seems rather to fancy the young fellow John,) laughed
out such a clear, loud laugh, that it started us all off, as the
locust-cry of some full-throated soprano drags a multitudinous chorus
after it. It was plain that some dam or other had broken in the soul of
this young girl, and she was squaring up old scores of laughter, out of
which she had been cheated, with a grand flood of merriment that swept
all before it. So we had a great laugh all round, in which the
Model--who, if she had as many virtues as there are spokes to a wheel,
all compacted with a personality as round and complete as its tire, yet
wanted that one little addition of grace, which seems so small, and is as
important as the linchpin in trundling over the rough ways of life--had
not the tact to join. She seemed to be "stuffy" about it, as the young
fellow John said. In fact, I was afraid the joke would have cost us both
our new lady-boarders.
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