He laughed out his desire to know what could be really finer than the flower he had culled, and was ready to prove to her that he had other flowers too by presenting her at her convenience the entire nosegay. The spirit of this contention on both sides would have continued, no doubt, to raise the pitch of pleasure hadn't Perry, turning round from his window as if to stare at a pair of comedians in a play, intervened in a manner that spoke again of the notable growth of his wit. "As I think you've never in your life written to me in any absence," he said to his sister, "of course I can't answer for your way with it, especially as one has heard that love-letters are always distracted, and I wouldn't give a rap myself for one that wasn't"--of which last he rather solemnly notified Ralph. "My sister Nan," he further informed him, "isn't a girl to lose her head even when she loses her heart; there's never a word out in anything _she_ writes, and whenever I'm away from her she does me the kindness." "Pray how can _you_ judge of her style," Molly asked in derision, "when you told me but the other day you'd bring me a specimen of your own to look over and then didn't?--which I think must have been because on your intending the first letter of your life you found the feat was beyond you. It was to have been to a lady, didn't I understand?--and you'll have lost your head, I suppose, even more than your heart, and were afraid of showing for more distracted than need have been." Perry Midmore, under this retort, only looked at the girl as if her humour, keen though it might have been, already found his thought, drawn off; so that, unexpectedly to Ralph, his defence was but after an instant to ignore her and make, as with a decenter interest, an appeal to their guest. "I should like to show _you_, sir, how Nan can acquit herself, though I'm sure of course that you understand our exchange of compliments. We bandy words in sport and among ourselves, but don't take 'em, you may well suppose, from any one else. I quite agree with my mother," he further remarked, "that we're bound to take you for a man of the greatest taste."