eBooks Base 2000

"I love Aunt Felicia very dearly," she announced, as though in protest
against some implied and subtle disloyalty.
"But don't we all love Cousin Felicia?" he returned, promptly, eager to
maintain his advantage. "Isn't she kindness incarnate, Christian
charity personified? As for me, I simply dote on her; and with reason,
for ever since those remote ages in which I wore scratchy pinafores and
horrid little white socks, she has systematically and pertinaciously
spoiled me whenever she stayed at Canton Magna.--Oh! she is an
institution. No family should be without her. When I was small she gave
me chocolates, tin soldiers, pop-guns warranted to endanger my
brothers' and sisters' eyesight. And now, in a thousand ways, conscious
and unconscious," he laughed quietly, naughtily, the words running over
each other in the rapidity of his speech--"she gives me such a blessed
good conceit of myself!"
And Damaris Verity, caught by the wave of his light-heartedness and
inherent desire to please, softened again, her serious eyes alight for
the moment with answering laughter.


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