"It is so," she insisted, "else you would not be glowering at me in this ill-humour."
"Nay," I answered seriously, "I am in no ill-humour."
"You are," she interrupted almost viciously. "You are in the worst ill-humour in the world. Well, I do apologize. I should not have kept you waiting at Applegarth."
And I do not think that I ever heard an apology tendered with a worse grace.
"And now that I have begged your pardon," she continued, "I will carry my own bundle, thank you;" and she held out her hand for it.
"No indeed, and that you will not do," said I, hotly, "if you beg pardon from now to Doomsday."
"It is perfectly plain," said she, "that you mean to pick a quarrel with me."
Now, that I took to be the most unjust statement that she could make. And—
"Who began it?" I asked. "Who began the quarrel?"
"It is a question," she replied, with the utmost contempt, "that children ask in a nursery;" and very haughtily she marched in front of me down the hillside.