Isola comes, like a tea-china rose bedded in poplin and ermine. Her close-drawn bonnet of velvet, mazarin blue, is freaked with snowdrops, nod, nod, nodding, not too many of them. I hail the omen of spring, and my spirits rise already. Idols is up for a lark (as the junior sophists express it) and she has set her heart upon leading me such a dance. Shall she ever set that sweet heart upon anything, and not obtain it at once? Who knows? Never, I am quite sure, when another heart is the object. "Come, you grave old Grandmother. You are younger than me, I believe, in spite of all your stories; and you are old enough in your ways, for old mother Hubbard that lived in a cupboard. Oh my tippets and furbelows, if I wore as tall as you, and half as long in the waist, what a dress I would have. Fifteen guineas at least. Come along, you bed-ridden dump of a Clara; it’s freezing like bricks and silica, and I am in such spirits, and Giudice is frightening Tom out of his life in the kitchen." She danced round my little room, like a leaf when the wind is rising. The Pixie-king of my gordit could not have been lighter of foot, nor half so lovely of form. How she managed to spin so between the "sticks," none but herself can tell. What would poor Mrs. Shelfer have said? In spite of her fears for the furniture, she would have laughed, I believe, and blessed the pretty feet. "Come along, Clara child. Do you think I am going to stand still here all day?" "If you call that standing still, pray give me the senior sophist’s definition of motion." "Oh I want to skate, so dreadfully. And Pappy and Conrad won’t let me. They say it isn’t becoming. But what on earth can be more so? Wouldn’t I skim on one foot? I’ll skate, in spite of them, Clara, if you’ll only keep me in countenance." "Can you imagine me skating?" "No. I know you won’t do it, you are so fearfully grave. But there’s more fun in you, when you like, or when you can’t help yourself, as I’ve seen you once or twice, than there is in a hundred such Merry-Andrews as me. At any rate we’ll go and see them. On with your bonnet now, I cannot wait a minute. Have something to cover your eyes. Conny ’11 be there I know." On went my bonnet, nothing loth to have an airing again. It was fading in the box. "Now lots of warm things, darling. You have no idea how cold it is, and scarcely sun enough to thaw the long frost in your eyes. Let me look at them, Donna. Oh if mine were half as bright. You can’t have got them in England." "Now, Idols, don’t talk nonsense. Every inch of me is English, and not an inch of you; although your eyes are so blue. You are Scotch all over, or else you are all Swiss."