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By that time the charm will have done its work: the pan will be cream to the bottom; and you will bless me for a secret which will make your fortune. Put the bauble under this pannikin; which none must lift for a day and a night. Have no fear, my simple wench; not a breath of harm shall come to you, if you obey my orders." "Oh, that I will, sir, that I will: if you will only tell me what to do."
A pretty trifle in its way, no doubt, is the love between youth and youth, gay varieties of the bauble spread the counter of the great toy-shop; but thou, courteous dame Nature, raise thine arm to yon shelf, somewhat out of every-day reach, and bring me down that obsolete, neglected, unconsidered thing, the love between age and childhood.
Patt started seemed surprised; her cheeks flushed, and then I saw that pleasure was the feeling predominant. "Am I too late to secure that jewel, as a pendant to my chain?" I asked, half in jest, half seriously. "Too soon, at least, to attract it by the richness and beauty of the bauble. A more natural and disinterested girl than Mary Warren does not exist in the country."
Then he looked up at her, and their eyes met, hers with desperate expectation and his holding her gaze in an unmoved questioning. "Did she give it to you?" he asked, and she shook her head with a negation almost imperceptible. "No," said Jeffrey to himself. "She didn't have it. Who did have it?" He let it lie on the table before him and gazed at the bauble in a strong distaste.
They were gone, and Lena lingered a moment, fastening her dearly-bought bauble around her neck and gathering her books, while a maid came scudding from the house to bundle rugs and cushions away in face of the thunder-heads looming in the southwest. A sudden sibilant sound brought Lena to attention. "Mrs. Percival!" she heard. "Look up."
"Of nothing of of a wild dream of hiding away from the world in some unknown corner, at times comes to me in my sleep only in my sleep, Sir Karl for in my waking hours I know it to be impossible. The only pleasant part of being a princess is that the world envies you; but what a poor bauble it is to buy at the frightful price I pay!"
"But where is that king? Men speak of my most gentle kinsman Sir John Comyn, called the Red bah! The sceptre were the same jewelled bauble in his impotent hand as in his sapient uncle's; a gem, a toy, forsooth, the loan of crafty Edward. No! the Red Comyn is no king for Scotland; and who is there besides? The rightful heir a cold, dull-blooded neutral a wild and wavering changeling.
The pope, the king, the youthful squire, Each one the fool's cap doth attire; He who the bauble will not wear, The worst of fools doth soon appear. Thee may the motley still adorn, When, an old man, the laurel crown Thy head doth deck, while gifts less vain, Thine age to bless will still remain. When fair grandchildren thee delight, Mayst then recall this Christmas night.
His bauble, made of ebony, was crested as usual with a fool's head, with ass's ears formed of silver; but so small, and so minutely carved, that, till very closely examined, it might have passed for an official baton of a more solemn character. These were the only badges of his office which his dress exhibited. In other respects, it was such as to match with that of the most courtly nobles.
I rather avoided him after dinner, for I confess he struck me as cruelly conceited, and the revelation was a pain. "The usual twaddle" my acute little study! That one's admiration should have had a reserve or two could gall him to that point! I had thought him placid, and he was placid enough; such a surface was the hard polished glass that encased the bauble of his vanity.
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