"No; I didn't hear you. Were you late? Will you have
sole or bacon?"
"Sole, please," I said. "Yes; Dick and I walked back from Lucia's
place."
"How did you find her?" he asked, stirring his tea I had just handed
him, and looking at me. "Don't you think she has deteriorated in
looks very much?"
"Enormously," I replied, without hesitation.
There is nothing like conceding at once to your opponent any point
that you admit yourself. It saves discussion being wasted upon that
which you are really agreed about, and gives more weight to all you
refuse to relinquish to him afterwards.
My father looked a little surprised, and did not answer immediately,
and I continued,--
"She was always, as far as I remember, a girl who could look
exceedingly pretty and positively plain, and all the intermediate
gradations, within twenty-four hours, but really," I added, meeting
his eyes across the breakfast table, and the full blaze of the
sunlight falling into my own, "to me, in any one of them, she is
equally"--
I hesitated a second, and he put in--
"Attractive?"
It was not the word I should have used, but it served, and I let it
pass.
"I suppose it's really her talent that fetches you as much as
anything, eh?" he said, after a few minutes.
"And her character," I answered; "her whole personality. I suppose
all those things weighed at first, but, as a matter of fact, now it
is quite enough that she is the woman I have determined upon.
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