“Oh, please stop saying ‘yes’ like that, it makes me so horribly nervous.”
He continued to look out of the window.
“Are you nervous?” he said. “I am sorry, because it is very bad to be nervous.”
“I shall not be so if you will only cease tacking that ‘yes’ on to the end of every question that you find occasion to ask me.”
“What is ‘tacking’?” he asked, whirling around.
“Attaching.”
“Why did you not pronounce it plainly the first time?”
She rose slowly from her seat and retouched the violets where he had disturbed their carefully arranged disorder. He quitted the window and approached her side.
“I asked you to go out with me,” he reminded her; “will you go? Yes?—I mean ‘No’?” he added in hasty correction.
She bent above the flowers, just to see what he would say next.