take no notice. Tears? The very thing. Decent, touching, non-compromising tears, that may mean anything or nothing. If only I could get them up, there's the rub; tears never came easy to me at any time. Joy or sorrow must prick me pretty sharply before the salt fount is unsealed. I sit bolt upright, take out my handkerchief, and with the heartiness with which I always set about all my undertakings, I try hard to "weep a little weep." I think of my own tomb, and nobody to weep over it—always a subject of dismal contemplation with me; of the end of the world, and the sorry figure that I shall cut; of Jack, cut off in the flower of his youth; of George, a victim to my charms, standing on his head with his heels sticking out of the Thames mud; of every dismal picture, in short, that I can conjure up before my mind, but all in vain. My tears come not; and though I scrub my eyes and nose and cheeks into a high state of refulgency, they remain dry as bones.
I am putting away my handkerchief, feeling that my last weapon has broken in my hand, and that nothing is now left to me but dignified flight, when I catch Paul's eye, and discover that he is absolutely—yes, absolutely laughing. I stare at him for a minute in amazed silence is this his way of going down on his knees?
"Have you quite finished trying to pump up those tears?" he asks, passing his hand over his mouth. "I have been watching you for some time, and I am sure you must have hurt yourself with that piece of cambric."
"I am going," I say, jumping up. "Oh, I had no idea you could behave so ill; I thought you liked me."
He snatches at my skirts as I pass him, and in a second has perched me on his knee, holding me there with a firm grasp that I cannot shake off. Tears, real tears, are in my eyes now, but they do not fall; he shall not think that what is a laughing matter with him is a crying one with me.
