“Lud!” she cried, “what a dull young man!”
“Dull?”
“Aye—to make me ask for a kiss in so many words:” and with the back of her left hand she wiped her mouth for it frankly, while she held out the mug in her right.
“Oh!” I said, “I beg your pardon, but my wits are frozen up, I think. There’s two, for interest: and another if you tell me whom your master entertains to-night, that I must be content with this crib.”
She took the kisses with composure and said—
“Well—to begin, there’s the gentlefolk that came this afternoon with their own carriage and heathenish French servant: a cranky old grandee and a daughter with more airs than a peacock: Sir Something-or-other Killigew—Lord bless the boy!”
For I had dropp’d the mug and spilt the hot sack all about the straw, where it trickled away with a fragrance reproachfully delicious.
“Now I beg your pardon a hundred times: but the chill is in my bones worse than the ague;” and huddling my shoulders up, I counterfeited a shivering fit with a truthfulness that surpris’d myself.
“Poor lad!”
“—And ’tis first hot and then cold all down my spine.”