Leonard gave a sort of growl, intimating that Aubrey was exciting his displeasure; and Ethel was glad to be at home, and break off the conversation; but in a few minutes Aubrey knocked at her door, and edging himself in, mysteriously said, 'Such fun! So it was your beaux yeux, not Leonard's, that made the conquest!' 'I suppose she was touched with what I said of poor Leonard's circumstances, and the pleasure the creature gave him.' 'That is as prosy as Mary, Ethel. At any rate, the woman told Leonard yours was the most irresistibly attractive countenance she ever saw, short of beauty; and that's not the best of it, for he is absolutely angry. 'No wonder,' laughed Ethel. 'No, but it's about the beauty! He can't conceive a face more beautiful than yours.' 'Except the gargoyle on the church tower,' said Ethel, gaping into as complete a model of that worthy as flesh and blood could perpetrate. 'But he means it,' persisted Aubrey, fixing his eyes critically on his sister's features, but disturbed by the contortions into which she threw them. 'Now don't, don't. I never saw any fellow with a hundredth part of your gift for making faces,' he added, between the unwilling paroxysms of mirth at each fresh grimace; but I want to judge of you; and--oh! that solemn one is worse than all; it is like Julius Caesar, if he had ever been photographed!--but really, when one comes to think about it, you are not so very ugly after all; and are much better looking than Flora, whom we were taught to believe in.' 'Poor Flora! You were no judge in her blooming days, before wear and tear came.' 'And made her like our Scotch grandfather.' 'But Blanche! your own Blanche, Aubrey? She might have extended Leonard's ideas of beauty.' 'Blanche has a pretty little visage of her own; but it's not so well worth looking at as yours,' said Aubrey. 'One has seen to the end of it at once; and it won't light up. Hers is just the May blossom; and yours the--the--I know--the orchis! I have read of a woman with an orchidaceous face!' Teeth, tongue, lips, eyes, and nose were at once made to serve in hitting off an indescribable likeness to an orchis blossom, which was rapturously applauded, till Ethel, relaxing the strain and permitting herself to laugh triumphantly at her own achievement, said, 'There! I do pride myself on being of a high order of the grotesque.' 'It is not the grotesque that he means.' said Aubrey, 'he is very cracked indeed. He declares that when you came and sat by him the day before yesterday, you were perfectly lovely.' 'Oh, then I understand, and it is no matter,' said Ethel. CHAPTER V They stwons, they stwons, they stwons, they stwons. --Scouring of the White Horse