Page:Shirley (1849 Volume 2).djvu/166

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154
SHIRLEY.

—you look reflective—you look what I call interesting."

"Hush, Shirley! You flatter me."

"I don't wonder that your scholars like you."

"Nonsense, Shirley: talk of something else."

"We will talk of Moore, then, and we will watch him: I see him even now."

"Where?" And as Caroline asked the question, she looked not over the fields, but into Miss Keeldar's eyes, as was her wont whenever Shirley mentioned any object she descried afar. Her friend had quicker vision than herself; and Caroline seemed to think that the secret of her eagle acuteness might be read in her dark gray irids: or rather, perhaps, she only sought guidance by the direction of those discriminating and brilliant spheres.

"There is Moore," said Shirley, pointing right across the wide field where a thousand children were playing, and now nearly a thousand adult spectators walking about. "There—can you miss the tall stature and straight port? He looks amidst the set that surround him like Eliab amongst humbler shepherds—like Saul in a war-council: and a war-council it is, if I am not mistaken."

"Why so, Shirley?" asked Caroline, whose eye had at last caught the object it sought. "Robert is just now speaking to my uncle, and they are shaking hands; they are then reconciled."

"Reconciled not without good reason, depend on it: making common cause against some common