Her brother did not seem to hear her, but, taking the tongs, picked up the two ends of a stick that had just fallen apart, and arranged them so as to make a new blaze. Miss Emily was obliged to repeat her question, whereat he started as one awakened out of a dream, and said,-- "Why, yes, he didn't know but she did; there were a good many women with black eyes and black hair,--Mrs. Kittridge, for instance." "Why, I don't think that she looked like Mrs. Kittridge in the least," said Miss Emily, warmly. "Oh, well! I didn't say she did," said her brother, looking drowsily at his watch; "why, Emily, it's getting rather late." "What made you look so when I showed you that bracelet?" said Miss Emily, determined now to push the war to the heart of the enemy's country. "Look how?" said her brother, leisurely moistening a bit of toast in his cider. "Why, I never saw anybody look more wild and astonished than you did for a minute or two." "I did, did I?" said her brother, in the same indifferent tone. "My dear child, what an active imagination you have. Did you ever look through a prism, Emily?" "Why, no, Theophilus; what do you mean?" "Well, if you should, you would see everybody and everything with a nice little bordering of rainbow around them; now the rainbow isn't on the things, but in the prism." "Well, what's that to the purpose?" said Miss Emily, rather bewildered. "Why, just this: you women are so nervous and excitable, that you are very apt to see your friends and the world in general with some coloring just as unreal. I am sorry for you, childie, but really I can't help you to get up a romance out of this bracelet. Well, good-night, Emily; take good care of yourself and go to bed;" and Mr. Sewell went to his room, leaving poor Miss Emily almost persuaded out of the sight of her own eyes. CHAPTER XI LITTLE ADVENTURERS The little boy who had been added to the family of Zephaniah Pennel and his wife soon became a source of grave solicitude to that mild and long-suffering woman. For, as the reader may have seen, he was a resolute, self-willed little elf, and whatever his former life may have been, it was quite evident that these traits had been developed without any restraint. Mrs. Pennel, whose whole domestic experience had consisted in rearing one very sensitive and timid daughter, who needed for her development only an extreme of tenderness, and whose conscientiousness was a law unto herself, stood utterly confounded before the turbulent little spirit to which her loving-kindness had opened so ready an asylum, and she soon discovered that it is one thing to take a human being to bring up, and another to know what to do with it after it is taken.