"If you ask me, I——"
"And am I coming again to Mingham? Although you don't ask me."
"Will you really?"
"Oh, you do ask me? When I ask you to ask me!"
"Any day you'll——"
"No, I'll surprise you. Good-by. Good-by really."
The conversation, it must be admitted, sounds commonplace when verbally recorded. Yet he would be a despondent man who considered it altogether discouraging; Mina did not think Janie's glances discouraging either. But Bob Broadley, a literal man, found no warrant for fresh hope in any of the not very significant words which he repeated to himself as he rode home up the valley of the Blent. He suffered under modesty; it needed more than coquetry to convince him that he exercised any attraction over the rich and brilliant (brilliance also is a matter of comparison) Miss Iver, on whose favor Mr Tristram waited and at whose side Major Duplay danced attendance.
"You're a dreadful flirt, Janie," said Mina, as she kissed her friend.
Janie was not a raw girl; she was a capable young woman of two-and-twenty.
"Nonsense," she said rather crossly. "It's not flirting to take time to make up your mind."