"Has she sentiment for what she sings? or is it only faculty?" Cornelia
put it to Mr. Sumner.

That gentleman faintly defended the stranger for the intrusion of the
bumpkin tune. "She did it so well!" he said.

"I complain that she did it too well," uttered Cornelia, whose use of
emphasis customarily implied that the argument remained with her.

Talking in this manner, and leisurely marching homeward, they were
startled to hear Mr. Pericles, who had wrapped himself impenetrably in
the bear, burst from his cogitation suddenly to cry out, in his harshest
foreign accent: "Yeaz!" And thereupon he threw open the folds, and laid
out a forefinger, and delivered himself: "I am made my mind! I send her
abroad to ze Academie for one, two, tree year. She shall be instructed
as was not before. Zen a noise at La Scala. No--Paris! No--London!
She shall astonish London fairst.--Yez! if I take a theatre! Yez! if I
buy a newspaper! Yez! if I pay feefty-sossand pound!"

His singular outlandish vehemence, and the sweeping grandeur of a
determination that lightly assumed the corruptibility of our Press, sent
a smile circling among the ladies and gentlemen. The youth who had
wished to throw the fair unknown a dozen bouquets, caught himself
frowning at this brilliant prospect for her, which was to give him his
opportunity.




CHAPTER III