"Contraband?" said Mr. Raleigh. "And sweet as stolen fruit," said Marguerite. "Ursule makes the richest comfits, but not so innumerable as these. Mamma and I owe our sweet-tooth and honey-lip to bits of her concoction." "Mrs. Purcell," asked Mr. Raleigh, as that lady entered, "is this little banquet no seduction to you?" "What are you doing?" she replied. "Drinking honey-dew from acorns." "Laudersdale as ever!" ejaculated she, looking over his shoulder. "I thought you had 'no sympathy with'"---- "But I 'like to see other folks take'"---- "Their sweets, in this case. No, thank you," she continued, after this little rehearsal of the past. "What are you poisoning all this brood for?" "Mrs. Laudersdale eats sweetmeats; they don't poison her," remonstrated Katy. "Mrs. Laudersdale, my dear, is exceptional." Katy opened her eyes, as if she had been told that the object of her adoration was Japanese. "It is the last grain that completes the transformation, as your story-books have told; and one day you will see her stand, a statue of sugar, and melt away in the sun. To be sure, the whole air will be sweetened, but there will be no Mrs. Laudersdale." "For shame, Mrs. Purcell!" cried Marguerite. "You're not sweet-tempered, or you'd like sweet dainties yourself. Here are nuts swathed in syrup; you'll have none of them? Here are health and slumber and idle dreams in a chocolate-drop. Not a chocolate? Here are dates; if you wouldn't choose the things in themselves, truly you would for their associations? See, when you take up one, what a picture follows it: the plum that has swung at the top of a palm and crowded into itself the glow of those fierce noon-suns; it has been tossed by the sirocco, it has been steeped in reeking dew; there was always stretched above it the blue intense tent of a heaven full of light,--always below and around, long level reaches of hot shining sand; the phantoms of waning desert moons have hovered over it, swarthy Arab chiefs have encamped under it; it has threaded the narrow streets of Damascus--that city the most beautiful--on the backs of gaunt gray dromedaries; it has crossed the seas,--and all for you, if you take it, this product of desert freedom, torrid winds, and fervid suns!" "I might swallow the date," said Mrs. Purcell, "but Africa would choke me." Mr. Raleigh had remained silent for some time, watching Marguerite as she talked. It seemed to him that his youth was returning; he forgot his resolves, his desires, and became aware of nothing in the world but her voice. Just before she concluded, she grew conscious of his gaze, and almost at once ceased speaking; her eyes fell a moment to meet it, and then she would have flashed them aside, but that it was impossible; lucid lakes of light, they met his own; she was forced to continue it, to return it, to forget all, as he was forgetting, in that long look. "What is this?" said Mrs. Purcell, stooping to pick up a trifle on the matting.