'Fanny,' said Henrietta, with an inquisitorial air, after the girls had decided that the slides on the bows of Lilly's dress were too small, and that her 'Bird of Paradise' was lovely enough to fly away with them all, 'Fanny, are you the 'bright, particular star' of that man?' 'I believe so,' said Fanny, with a stare. 'Do you intend to beam on him for any length of time?' persisted Henrietta. 'I haven't decided,' said Fan, honestly. 'I love beauty, and Landon Snowe is magnificent.' 'So is the Venus de Medicis,' said Henrietta, fiercely; 'but look at her spine! What sort of a brain do you think _could_ flourish at the top of such a spine? Not that I suppose that man to have the least fragment of one; don't suspect such a thing! Don't you observe his weak, disjointed way of carrying his head, and the Pisan appearance of his sentences? I should dread an earthquake for such a man as Mr. Snowe--you'd have nothing but remnants to remember him by, Fanny.' 'But earthquakes _are_ phenomena,' said Fanny, stoutly, 'and I'm not in the least like one. As long as Landon never fails except spiritually, I am contented--and even in that light _I_ never knew him to trip,' and the child was as indignant as her indolent nature would permit. 'Trip! of course not,' echoed Henrietta, 'when he's buried like a delicate Sphinx up to his shoulders in the sands of your good opinion, and the mummy cloths of his own conceit; but just remove these, and you'll see a downfall. My dear FRANCESCA, this man is your CECCO, and he'd far better retire into a monastery than hope to win you. Why, I'd rather marry you myself, FRANCESCA! Such charms!' and Henrietta, with her own delicate perception and enjoyment of the beautiful, kissed my sister's deprecatingly extended hand, and, as the dinner bell rang, waltzed her out of the room. 'It's perfectly bewildering the interest some people take in music,' she resumed later, building a little tent on the side of her plate with the _debris_ of fish. 'There's Bartlett Browning, telling me the other evening a melancholy story of some melodious fishes, off the coast of--_Weiss nicht wo_; oysters, I suppose; conceive of it! the most phlegmatic of creatures. I suppose some poor fisherman heard a merlady singing in her green halls, and fancied it the death song of some of his shells. But that's nothing to some of Bartlett Browning's musical tales. The man's a perfect B flat himself!' 'Well,' said Nelly, Phil's little girl, who had come around to show her new velvet basque, 'but shells _do_ sing, for I've often listened to mamma's, and Bessy gives it to me at night to put me to sleep. _You_ know, Aunt Bertie, for you once made me learn what it said: 'Oh, sweet and far, from cliff and scar, The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!'