that fed upon him—and following Bessy with speaking eyes, and shaking her golden tresses, and beating her silver foot in blithe accompaniment of the measure. “How beautiful is Bessy to-day!” said Miss Candituft, joining Bessy’s father and mother. “Quite delicious,” cried Miss Pennibacker to Bessy’s mother; and Miss Candituft swerved her fair neck, and opened her cold eyes at Monica, as though resenting any admiration of so interesting a subject as a trespass upon her own monopoly of love.[Pg 64] And then she said, with new supply of fervour—“She carries all hearts with her.” [Pg 64] “She is so beautiful,” again interposed Monica.—Again Miss Candituft stared. “Why, as for that, she’s very good—and very like her mother,” said Carraways, and then he laughed at his wife, and added—“and so we won’t talk so much about the beauty. However, perhaps I’m grown too old to judge;” and the father looked towards his child, and his face glowed with pride and pleasure as she nodded to him, and wove in and out the dance, young, healthful, and happy as a nymph. “Ugh! Mr. Carraways,—this is too good; too fine; too grand for poor folks. It’s cruel of you—sheer barbarity, sir; hard-hearted pride of purse, nothing better. Cruel, sir; cruel,” gasped Colonel Bones, offering his hand to the hostess, then to the host, and then making a courteous sweeping bow to the ladies; for Bones was gallant to the last. “What, then, Colonel”—cried Miss Candituft—“you don’t enjoy this elysium? You don’t like to tread upon asphodel?” “An insult to poverty, Miss Candituft—an insult;” and Colonel Bones smiled a hard smile, and his dark, deep sunk eyes twinkled from behind his ragged eyebrows. “Too bad of our host to drag a beggar like me here: really too bad. Tyrannous, tyrannous to scourge poverty with golden rods. Humph?” And the Colonel looked around. “I dare say you can bear it, Colonel,” answered Miss Candituft, staring at him, and reading in the human antiquity the hidden mystery of wealth. Before the eyes of the far-seeing spinster the heart of Colonel Bones lay all revealed; open, discovered, like the valley of diamonds. “You can bear it;” and saying this, the smiling lady drew the very best flower from her bouquet, and threaded it in the Colonel’s button-hole. “Ugh!” said Colonel Bones, with a grim smile looking down upon the
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