This occasioned a temporary coolness between Pepper and myself.
Not disheartened, however, I placed Laura Rice--I believe it was Laura Rice--in the vacant niche.

The new idol was more cruel than the old.
The former frankly sent me to the right about, but the latter was a deceitful lot.

She wore my nosegay in her dress at the evening service (the Primroses were marched to church three times every Sunday), she penned me the daintiest of notes, she sent me the glossiest of ringlets (cut, as I afterwards found out, from the stupid head of Miss Gibbs's chamber-maid), and at the same time was holding me and my pony up to ridicule in a series of letters written to Jack Harris.

It was Harris himself who kindly opened my eyes.
"I tell you what, Bailey," said that young gentleman, "Laura is an old veteran, and carries too many guns for a youngster.

She can't resist a flirtation; I believe she'd flirt with an infant in arms.