If ye do, they will certainly think ye highly conceited, for ye know quite well that people say you four little ones are just as exactly like him as ye can be." The children were evidently impressed.
"In fact," said Valentine, "now I take a good look at him, I should say that you are even more like him than he is himself--but--I may be mistaken." "I won't say it then," said Bertram, now quite convinced.
"And I won't, and I won't," added others, as they ran forward to open a grate.
"Cheer up, John," said St.George, "let us not see so much beauty and virtue cast down.

There's Miss Crampton looking out of the school-room window." But though he laughed he did not deceive John Mortimer, who knew as well as possible that the loss of Dorothea Graham pressed heavily on his heart.
"You two are going to dine with me, of course," he said, when all the party had passed into the wilderness beyond his garden.
"On the contrary, with your leave," answered Valentine, "we are going to take a lesson of Swan in the art of budding roses.

We cannot manage it to our minds.

We dined early." "And I suppose you will agree with Val," observed Brandon, "that a rose-garden is one of the necessaries of life." "Dorothea must have one, must she, out in New Zealand?
Well, Swan will be proud to teach you anything he knows or doesn't know, and he will give you an opinion if you ask it on any subject whatever." Accordingly John went into the house to dine, and perhaps it was in consequence of this assertion that the two young men asked their old friend's opinion on various points not at all in his line.

Valentine even told him that his brother intended to write a book, and asked him what he thought it had better be about; whereupon Swan, while deftly shaping his _bud_, shook his head gravely, and said that wanted a deal of thinking over.
"But if I was you, sir," he continued, speaking to Brandon, "I should get Mr.Mortimer--Mr.John--to help you, specially if there's going to be any foreign talk in it.