"Kiss me, then."
She put my arms around her, made me clasp her to my breast, and we kissed, passionately
I suddenly felt ten years older
She broke away from me, jumping around, slapping her hands and bubbling over with triumphant mirth, as she shouted: "There is a pious soul for you! There is a pious soul for you!"
A thought of little Red Esther of my childhood days flashed through my brain, of the way she would force me to "sin" and then gloat over my "fall."
"A penny for your piety," Matilda added, gravely. "When you are in America you'll dress like a Gentile and even shave. Then you won't look so ridiculous. Good clothes would make another man of you." At this she looked me over in a business-like sort of way. "Pretty good figure, that," she concluded
In the evening of that day, when there was company in the house, she bore herself as though she did not know me. But the next morning, after the children had gone to school and her mother was away on her various missions, she made me put on the glittering coat and cap of her brother's Sunday uniform
"It's rather too small for you, but it's becoming all the same," she said, enthusiastically. "If mamma came in now she would not know you. But then there would be a nice how-do-you-do if she did." She gave a titter which rolled through my very heart. "Well, Mr. Gymnasist, [note] are you really in love with me?"
"Don't make fun of me, pray," I implored her. "It hurts, you know."
"Very well, I sha'n't. But you haven't answered my question."
"What question?"