'You were very welcome! It is the very creature that baffles me. I can talk to any animal in the world except an incipient parson.' 'Owen, for instance?' 'Oh! if people choose to put a force on nature, there can be no general rules. But, Cilly, you know I've always said you should marry whoever you liked; but I require another assurance--on your word and honour--that you are not irrevocably Jenny Wren as yet!' 'Did you not see the currant wine?' said Cilly, pulling leaves off a myrtle in a tub on the stairs, and scattering them over her cousin. 'Seriously, Cilly! Ah, I see now--your exclusive attention to him entirely reassures me. You would never have served him so, if you had meant it.' 'It was commonplace in me,' said Lucilla, gravely, 'but I could not help it; he made me feel so good--or so bad--that I believe I shall--' 'Not give up the salmon,' cried Horatia. 'Cilly, you will drive me to commit matrimony on the spot.' 'Do,' said Lucilla, running lightly up, and dancing into the drawing-room, where the ladies were so much at their ease, on low couches and ottomans, that Phoebe stood transfixed by the novelty of a drawing-room treated with such freedom as was seldom permitted in even the schoolroom at Beauchamp, when Miss Fennimore was in presence. 'Phoebe, bright Phoebe!' cried Lucilla, pouncing on both her hands, and drawing her towards the other room, 'it is ten ages since I saw you, and you must bring your taste to aid my choice of the fly costume. Did you hear, Rashe? I've a bet with Lord William that I appear at the ball all in flies. Isn't it fun?' 'Oh, jolly!' cried Horatia. 'Make yourself a pike-fly.' 'No, no; not a guy for any one. Only wear a trimming of salmon-flies, which will be lovely.' 'You do not really mean it?' said Phoebe. 'Mean it? With all my heart, in spite of the tremendous sacrifice of good flies. Where honour is concerned--' 'There, I knew you would not shirk.' 'Did I ever say so?'--in a whisper, not unheard by Phoebe, and affording her so much satisfaction that she only said, in a grave, puzzled voice, 'The hooks?' 'Hooks and all,' was the answer. 'I do nothing by halves.' 'What a state of mind the fishermen will be in! proceeded Horatia. 'You'll have every one of them at your feet.'