"But you see the point was that the tongue was not unknown to her. She was a Greek girl and--"
"But what, after all, _did_ it mean? She told you afterwards, of course."
"Well," said Uncle Julian, meditating, "not exactly. I found out. I had said, '_Zoë_ mine, I love you!"
"Life of mine, I love you!" Patsy repeated, trying various tones. "Uncle Julian, you must have made love like an archangel. Without knowing it, you had said about all that there was to say, and changing your voice like that--oh, I do wish I had been that girl. I don't wonder you don't want to give me the yellow sandals. I should not even have lent them for five minutes. You must not. I shall bring them back to you. It would be a sacrilege!"
"No," said Uncle Julian, "you are the brightest thing in my world, the likest the Greek girl and all the young things I once loved. It is your turn now, you small, black-headed Pictish woman!"
"I am not 'small.' I am taller than you, Uncle Julian!"
"I daresay, but you are slim as a willow branch. I could take you up between my finger and thumb."
"If you could catch me, Uncle Julian; but, see--you could not!"
With a swift spring she threw herself out of the low French window and stood on the lawn, ready poised for flight.
"I have known many and learned much," he thought, "but I have missed the best."
"Come, Uncle," she said, tapping the grass with her shoe, "I can't run as well as in kilt and sandals, or like the girl who played ball on the sands, but I can beat you--yes, I could run in circles about you!"
"I know, I know, you swallow!" proclaimed an admiring uncle. "But the day is past when I ran after agreeable young women. Generally they have to pocket their pride and come to see me--you do every day, you know!"
"Yes," said Patsy, "but do not think it is to see you, even if you are my mother's brother--"
"My mother's brother, I say," persisted Patsy. "It is because you teach me to speak French and to read Latin books, and the mathematic (though that I love not so well), and also chiefly because you lend me many books to read up in dull old Cairn Ferris."
"Do not blaspheme the habitation of your fathers," said Julian Wemyss. "Here is a house all ready for you when you marry. If it were not for the table of affinities in the beginning of the Bible, and if I were twenty years younger, I should ask you myself!"