"Tell me!" (appealing piteously to them all), "do I look all right?
do I look pretty natural ?" "You do not look _middle-aged_ enough," says Bobby, bluntly.
"Put on your bonnet," suggests Algy.

"You look twenty years older in that, particularly when you cock it well over your nose, as you did last Sunday." "You are all very unkind!" say I, in a whimpering voice, walking toward the door.
"And if he becomes too demonstrative," says the Brat, overtaking me with a rush before I reach it, "say-- 'Unhand me, graybeard loon!'" Then I go.

As I know perfectly well, that if I give myself time to think, I shall stand with the drawing-room door-handle in my grasp for half an hour, before I can make up my mind to enter, I take the bull by the horns, and whisking in suddenly and noisily, find myself _tete-a-tete_ with my lover.
Certainly, I never felt such a fool in my life.

How _awful_ it will be if I burst out laughing in his face! It is quite as likely as not that I shall do it out of sheer hysterical fright.

Oh, how different! how much nicer it was when we last parted! I had taken him to see the jackdaw, and the little bear that Bobby brought from foreign parts; and jacky had bitten his finger so humorously, and we had been so merry, and I had told him again how much I wished that he could change places with father.