"In bed? Oh no! Why should any one expect to find you in bed, Peter?"
"Never call me by that name again!" he said, rising up from his chair, and standing erect, with one arm stretched out. She called him Peter, simply because it had been her custom so to do during the period of nearly fifty years in which they had lived in the same parish as brother and sister. She could, therefore, only stare at him and his tragic humor, as he stood there before her. "Though of course it is madness on my part to object to it! My godfather and godmother christened me Peter, and our father was Peter before me, and his father too was Peter Prosper. But that woman has made the name sound abominable in my ears."
"Miss Thoroughbung, you mean?"
"She came here, and so be-Petered me in my own house,—nay, up in this very room,—that I hardly knew whether I was on my head or my heels."
"I would not mind what she said. They all know that she is a little flighty."
"Nobody told me so. Why couldn't you let me know that she was flighty beforehand? I thought that she was a person whom it would have done to marry."
"If you will only think of it, Peter—" Here he shuddered visibly. "I beg your pardon, I will not call you so again. But it is unreasonable to blame us for not telling you about Miss Thoroughbung."
"Of course it is. I am unreasonable, I know it."
"Let us hope that it is all over now."
"Cart-ropes wouldn't drag me up to the hymeneal altar,—at least not with that woman."