She thanked
him with dim eyes.
"Sophia," he began, with much severity, "you say you have only your
old father in the world, and I'm bound to say you seem to find it
little enough. My dear, are you aware that you've just been
disappointing my dearest hopes?"
"Don't say that!"
"I begin to think I mustn't say anything. I have brought you up
carefully, instructing you in all polite learning, and even in some
of the abstruser sciences. I have meant you, all along, to be the
ornament of your sex, and now--the devil take it!--you prefer, after
all, to be an ornament of the other! I intended you, by your
accomplishments, to make that young man look foolish."
"And I assure you, father dear, he did look foolish this morning, and
again this afternoon in the summer-house."
"Now, upon my soul, Sophia! I call your attention to the fact I've
been suspecting ever since you began to speak, that you're at the
bottom of all to-day's mischief. If that unfortunate youth hadn't
been making love to you when he should have been attending to the
bees, the chances are they would never have taken it into their heads
to swarm upon that accursed arch, and consequently . . ."
There was nothing which Captain Runacles enjoyed so thoroughly as to
discover the connection between effects and their causes.
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