"Your hair is ever so
pretty."
Sailors' parrots swear like mariners, they say; and gay mothers ought to
realize that all children are imitative, for, as the precocious Fanchon
leaned toward Penrod, the manner in which she looked into his eyes might
have made a thoughtful observer wonder where she had learned her pretty
ways.
Penrod was even more confused than he had been by her previous
mysteries: but his confusion was of a distinctly pleasant and alluring
nature: he wanted more of it. Looking intentionally into another
person's eyes is an act unknown to childhood; and Penrod's discovery
that it could be done was sensational. He had never thought of looking
into the eyes of Marjorie Jones.
Despite all anguish, contumely, tar, and Maurice Levy, he still secretly
thought of Marjorie, with pathetic constancy, as his "beau"--though that
is not how he would have spelled it. Marjorie was beautiful; her
curls were long and the colour of amber; her nose was straight and
her freckles were honest; she was much prettier than this accomplished
visitor. But beauty is not all.
"I do!" breathed Fanchon, softly.
She seemed to him a fairy creature from some rosier world than this. So
humble is the human heart, it glorifies and makes glamorous almost any
poor thing that says to it: "I like you!"
Penrod was enslaved. He swallowed, coughed, scratched the back of his
neck, and said, disjointedly:
"Well--I don't care if you want to.
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