"Nineteen from forty-seven! how many years older than you ?" "Do not count!" cry I, pettishly; "what is the use?
not all the counting in the world will make him any younger." "It is not true!" cries Bobby, with boisterous skepticism, jumping up from his seat, and making a plunge at me; "it is a _hoax_! she has been taking us all in! Really, Nancy, for a beginner, you did not do it badly!" "It is _not_ a hoax!" cry I, scornfully, standing scarlet and deeply ashamed, facing them all; "it is real, plain, downright, simple truth." Another pause.

No sound but the monotonous, unemotional clock, and the woodpecker's fluty laugh from the orchard.
"And so you _really_ have a lover at last, Nancy ?" says Algy, the corners of his mouth beginning to twitch in a way which looks badly for the keeping of his oath.
"Yes!" say I, beginning to laugh violently, but quite uncomfortably; "are you surprised?
you know I always told you that if you half shut your eyes, and looked at me from a great way off, I really was not so bad-looking." "You have distanced the Begums!" cries the young fellow, joining in my mirth, but with a good deal more enjoyment than I can boast.
"So I have!" I answer; and my sense of the ludicrous overcoming all other considerations, I begin to giggle with a good-will.
"Let us look at you, Nancy!" says the Brat, taking hold of me by both arms, and bringing the minute impertinence of his face into close neighborhood to mine.

"I begin to think that there must be more in you than we have yet discovered! we never looked upon you as one of our most favorable specimens, did we ?" "Do not you remember old Aunt Williams ?" reply I, merrily; "how she used to say 'I was not pretty, my dears, but I was a pleasant little devil!' perhaps I am a pleasant little devil!" "_Poor_--_dear_--old fellow!" says Barbara, in an accent of the profoundest, delicatest, womanliest pity, "_how_ sorry I am for him! Nancy, how will you break it to him most kindly?
I am afraid he will be sadly hurt! will you speak to him, or do it by letter ?" Barbara has risen.

We are all standing up, more or less; it is impossible to sit through such news; Barbara's garden-hat is in her hand.

The warm and mellow sun that is making Africa's dreary expanse in the map on the wall, one broad fine sheet, is enkindling, too, the silk of her hair, the flower-petals of her cheeks, the blue compassion of her eyes.