Conny made her appearance at tea-time, and though she met my admiring gaze very steadily, I could not help thinking that she had been crying. There was just the faintest tinge of red round the rim of the eyes, whilst the eyes themselves looked soft and humid. I waited to see if her father or mother would notice these signs, but as they did not, I concluded that my suspicions were wrong, and that the effect I noticed was due to the heat, of which she had complained. She had changed her dress since dinner, and now appeared in white muslin. Her arms and throat were bare, and down her back, almost to her waist, fell the long gold-coloured curl she always wore. “And beauty leads us with a single hair,” said I, taking the curl between my fingers. “If it were a single hair it wouldn’t lead you,” she answered, with a coquettish manner that appeared to me perfectly natural, and thoroughly undeceived me in my notion that she had been crying. “Men like women to have plenty of hair.” “You should tell Charlie that your hair is all your own,” exclaimed my aunt, looking proudly at her child. “I don’t want to be told; I have eyes to see,” I replied. “It’s her own, take my word for it,” said my uncle. “I thank heaven that the dead have not been despoiled nor the living shorn to contribute to that show of hair. I only wonder that people can be found to skewer dead or distressed females’ tresses among their own locks. I should as soon think of wearing another man’s skull, were I dissatisfied with the shape of my own, as of gumming another fellow’s curls over my baldness.” “There are some things that are better not thought of,” said I, “buns, cooking, and wigs among them.” “Why buns?” asked my aunt. “Because,” said I, “I am told that they are the platform on which bare-footed bakers are sometimes accustomed to dance a saraband.” “Faugh!” cried my aunt. Conny ran out into the garden. I was going to follow her, when she came back holding a rosebud. “Put that in my hair,” said she, “and let me see what taste you have.” I ought to have possessed Uncle Toby’s simplicity when he looked into the Widow Wadman’s eye, and attended earnestly to what I was about, instead of thinking of other things, for then, perhaps, I should have pleased her. As it was, I put the rose in the wrong place, when she whipped it out, and smartly bade me try again. My aunt looked delighted: my uncle amused. “Where will you have it?” I enquired. “In the right place, of course,” she replied. “Well, then,” said I, “don’t face the glass, but be good enough to look at me.” You may believe I took some time in satisfying myself; putting the rose now on one side, now on the other side, stepping elegantly backwards to inspect her sweet face, touching with reverent fingers her golden locks, and twisting them round and round my heart in so complicated a mesh, that the fly whom a spider has spun upon its sticky threads is not a securer prisoner; until my uncle, losing patience, cried out,