“Well, Caleb Conover!” rebuked Desirée as soon as she and the Fighter were left alone. “Of all the historically idiotic plunges into other peoples’ greenhouses I ever saw!”
“What’ve I done now?” asked Caleb in due humility.
“What haven’t you done?” she retorted. “Don’t you know Mr. Caine is engaged to Letty Standish?”
“I’d forgotten for the minute. What of it?”
“There you sat and boasted you’d be invited to dinner at her house! When you don’t even know her. What am I to do with you? I’ve a great mind to make you drink two more cups of tea!”
“I don’t see yet what the row is,” he pleaded. “But I’ve riled you, Dey. I’m awful sorry. I oughtn’t to come here when there’s civilized folks callin’. I only make you ashamed, an’—”
“How often must I tell you,” she cried angrily, her big eyes suddenly growing moist, “never to say such things? You know they hurt me!”
“Why should it hurt anyone when I talk of goin’ to a—?”
“I’m not speaking about the dinner. It’s about your not coming to see me. If people don’t like to meet my chum, they needn’t call on me. As for being ‘ashamed’ of you—here! Take this cup of tea and drink it. Drink it, I say. And when you finish you must drink another. All of it. With sugar in it. Two lumps. I don’t care if you do hate sweet things. You’ve got to be punished! Drink it!”
Conover obediently gulped down the loathed liquid and held out his cup with an air of awkward contrition, for the second instalment of his penance.