'Then you had better tell him so, I ain't going to do it; he's your friend, and if he admires me, I think you ought to be proud of it.'
'You did nothing but flirt and giggle with him all the evening. What with you on one side and my mother on the other, I thought I must have left the room.'
'Giggle, indeed; I don't know what you mean, sir; you never eused to say I giggled.'
'Can't you say used, and not eused, you will never cease to be provincial,'
'Other folks are provincial, I think, besides me. If you said your own mother was provincial, it 'ould be true enough.'
'There again! if you are your own natural self, you leave out all your w's directly; I wish you would be careful, Netta.'
'Well, so do the French. I declare I won't speak again to-night, that I won't, you cross, unnatural, unfeeling fellow; and all because you're jealous of Owen. Madame Duvet says he's the handsomest man she ever saw, and that his beard is enough to win any woman's heart.'
'You had better hold your tongue, I think,' said Howel, stifling a laugh at the idea of Owen's irresistible beard; 'you never say a word of sense.'
'And you never say a kind word,' said Netta, breaking down at that last attack, and beginning to cry.
'Now don't blubber, and let all the house hear you.'