"Not at all. I was only thinking that you wouldn't be so 'techess,' as the darkies say, if you'd had a nice, blunt sister to tease you when you were young—that is, younger than you are now," she ended cruelly.
Loring swung himself down beside her.
"The atrocious crime of being a young man!" he said, looking into her eyes boldly and somewhat mockingly, in his turn. "It seems hard for you to forgive me that."
Sophy was a trifle disconcerted.
"You are so easy to tease ... it's a temptation," she said rather lamely.
Loring replied with apparent irrelevance.
"I believe the Brownings are the accepted standard of married bliss, aren't they?"
"Why—yes—I believe they are," admitted Sophy.
"Very well. And do you happen to remember that Elizabeth Barrett was some years older than Robert Browning!"
Sophy was annoyed to feel herself colouring.