Page:Crawford - Love in idleness.djvu/133

 and how to sit down and get up—and do lots of things," she added vaguely.

In this opinion her three old-maid cousins fully concurred, and they were quite ready to say as much in his favour as Fanny could have heard without laughing. They were therefore greatly distressed when she changed her mind.

"He's handsome," Fanny now admitted. "But he's a little too showy. I've seen men like him at races, but they were not the men who were introduced to me. I don't think they knew anybody I knew—that sort of man, don't you know? And his English accent isn't quite English, and I don't like his little flat whiskers, and his hands irritate me. Besides, he said he had been in the navy, and now he admits that he never was. That's enough."

"My dear Fanny," Cordelia answered, on such occasions, "there was a misunderstanding about that, you know. He was in the navy, since he was an officer of Marines, but of course he wasn't expected to know—"

"The Marines!" exclaimed Fanny,