"But I would," exclaimed Wogan, hotly. "Moreover, I do. With all my heart I say it. A great lubberly monster of a coward. He is envious, too, Jenny."
[pg 171]
Jenny had by this time stopped weeping.
"Why envious?" she asked with an accent of rebellion which was very much to Wogan's taste.
"It's as plain as the palm of my hand. Why should he make a dwarf of you, Jenny?—for it's the truth he has done that; he has made a little dwarf out of the finest girl in the land by robbing her of her heels." Jenny was on the point of interrupting with some indignation, but Wogan would not listen to her. "A dwarf," he continued, "it was your own word, Jenny. I could say nothing to comfort you when you spoke it, for it was so true and suitable an epithet. A little dwarf he has made of you, all body and no legs like a bear, a dwarf-bear, of course; and why, if it is not that he envies you your figure and is jealous of it in a mean and discreditable way? Sure, he wants to have all the looks and to appear quite incomparable to the eyes of his beautiful German. So he makes a dwarf of you, a little bear dwarf—"
Jenny, however, had heard this phrase often enough by now. She interrupted Wogan hotly, and it seemed her anger was now as much directed against him as it had been before against O'Toole.
"He is not envious," said she. "A fine friend he has in you, I am thinking. He has no need to be envious. Captain O'Toole could carry me to the house in his arms if he wished, which is more than you could do if you tried till midday to-morrow," and she turned her shoulder to Wogan, who, in no way abashed by her contempt, cried triumphantly,—
[pg 172]