“But we must try it, at any rate. Now, please come along, and stop being so absurd.” And grasping her wrist, Mr. Priestley pulled.
Her eyes sparkling stormily, Laura pulled back. Now that it had come to the point, her fears seemed to have left her. She was just furiously angry.
“I—I warn you,” she panted, “if you use force, you—you brute, I’ll fight back. I’ll—I’ll——”
Mr. Priestley stopped pulling and looked at her with something like despair. “But, good Heavens!” he exclaimed. “In the name of goodness, why don’t you want to?”
Laura also stopped pulling in sheer amazement. She could hardly believe her ears. Could this absurd little man really be as incredibly conceited as all that!
“You dare ask me that?” she demanded, her bosom heaving.
Mr. Priestley rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. He had heard a lot about the unreasonableness of women, but he had never heard anything that came within a mile of this. “Surely it’s an obvious question,” he murmured resignedly.
“Well, then, I’ll answer it,” Laura snapped. “Because I hate the sight of you! Now are you satisfied?”
It was Mr. Priestley’s turn to look incredulous. Besides being grossly unfair, considering all that had happened that evening, the answer appeared to be that of a complete imbecile. “That seems a very strange reason for wanting to go on being handcuffed to me,” he articulated.
“Good Heavens, I don’t want to go on being handcuffed to you! There’s nothing I want less in the world, you—you beast! I—oh!” And Laura, the devilish-minded Laura, terror of her brother and all who knew her, buried her face in the crook of her free arm and burst into real tears of mortification and alarm.