I am tall enough to be called Dorothy." She straightened herself up to her full height, and stepping close to my side, said: "I am as tall as you.

I will now try to make you vain.

You look just as young and as handsome as when I last saw you and so ardently admired your waving black mustachio and your curling chin beard." "Did you admire them, Doll--Dorothy ?" I asked, hoping, though with little faith, that the admiration might still continue.
"Oh, prodigiously," she answered with unassuring candor.

"Prodigiously.
Now who is vain, Cousin Malcolm Francois de Lorraine Vernon ?" "I," I responded, shrugging my shoulders and confessing by compulsion.
"But you must remember," she continued provokingly, "that a girl of twelve is very immature in her judgment and will fall in love with any man who allows her to look upon him twice." "Then I am to believe that the fire begins very early to burn in the feminine heart," I responded.
"With birth, my cousin, with birth," she replied; "but in my heart it burned itself out upon your curling beard at the mature age of twelve." "And you have never been in love since that time, Doll--Dorothy ?" I asked with more earnestness in my heart than in my voice.
"No, no; by the Virgin, no! Not even in the shadow of a thought.

And by the help of the Virgin I hope I never shall be; for when it comes to me, mark my word, cousin, there will be trouble in Derbyshire." "By my soul, I believe you speak the truth," I answered, little dreaming how quickly our joint prophecy would come true.
I then asked Dorothy to tell me about her father.
"Father is well in health," she said.