"
Connie gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
"I don't like the notion of them growing out at my shoulder-blades. And
however would you get on your clothes? If you put them over your wings,
they would be of no use, and would, besides, make you hump-backed; and if
you did not, everything would have to be buttoned round the roots of them.
You could not do it yourself, and even on Wynnie I don't think I could bear
to touch the things--I don't mean the feathers, but the skinny, folding-up
bits of them."
I laughed at her fastidious fancy.
"You want to fly, I suppose?" I said.
"O, yes; I should like that."
"And you don't want to have wings?"
"Well, I shouldn't mind the wings exactly; but however would one be able to
keep them nice?"
"There you go; starting from one thing to another, like a real bird
already. When you can't answer one thing, off to another, and, from your
new perch on the hawthorn, talk as if you were still on the topmost branch
of the lilac!"
"O, yes, papa! That's what I've heard you say to mamma twenty times."
"And did I ever say to your mamma anything but the truth? or to you either,
you puss?"
I had not yet discovered that when I used this epithet to my Connie, she
always thought she had gone too far.
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