Page:Traits and Trials.pdf/196

190 the volume with a trembling hand—and began to repeat the intricate French verb. She was too anxious and too timid to say it, even if she knew it, and the grammar was returned with the encouraging exclamation of "You grow stupider every day, and while you are poking over that old verb, who is to mend your frock, I should like to know—" The child did not attempt an answer, but returned to her corner and there indulged, if indulgence it could be called, in a fresh burst of sobs. At this moment a voice was heard in the passage running over the notes of a popular Italian song—the door opened, and in bounded, but with a vivacity full of grace, a tall handsome girl, with a profusion of bright hair falling in the softest ringlets, whom twenty different tones greeted with the same ejaculation."

"Fanny Beaumont, do come here."

No patriot fresh from an harangue to the people, no General in the first flush of victory, and its consequences, illuminations and public dinners; not even these have a popularity that