With a most unholy chuckle he is trying to hint that there was more between him and the young lady than it well beseems him to tell; but fortunately no one, but I, is listening to him.
I turn away my head, and look out of the window up at Charles's Wain, and all my other bright old friends.

No one is heeding me--no one sees me; so I drop my hot cheek on the sill.
Suddenly I start up.

Some one is approaching me: some one has thrown himself with careless freedom on the couch beside me.

It is Algy.
Having utterly failed in dislodging Mr.Parker from his cushion--having had a suggestion on his part, on the treatment of the gnat-bite, passed over in silent contempt--he has retired from the circle in dudgeon.
"This is lively, is not it ?" he says, in an aggressively loud voice, as if he were quarrelsomely anxious to be overheard.
I say "Hush!" apprehensively.
"As no one makes the slightest attempt to entertain _us_, we must entertain each other, I suppose!" "Yes, dear old boy!" I say, affectionately, "why not ?--it would not be the first time by many." "That does not make it any the more amusing!" he says, harshly.--"I say, Nancy"-- his eyes fixing themselves with sullen greediness on the central figure of the group he has left--on the slight round arm (after all, not half so round or so white as Barbara's or mine)--which is still under treatment, "_is_ eau de cologne good for those sort of bites ?--her arm _is_ bad, you know!" "_Bad!_" echo I, scornfully; "_bad!_ why, I am _all_ lumps, more or less, and so is Barbara! who minds _us_!" "You ought to make your old man--'_auld Robin Gray_'-- mind you," he says, with a disagreeable laugh.

"It is _his_ business, but he does not seem to see it, does he?
ha! ha!" "I _wish_!" cry I, passionately; then I stop myself.