"That depends on the view-point," I grinned. "Would you think it funny if I carried you off—really, you know—and—er—married you and made you live happy—"
"You seem to insist upon the happy part of it, which is not at all—"
"Necessary?" I hinted.
"Plausible," she supplied sweetly.
"But would you think it funny, if I did?"
She regarded her broken pencil ruefully—or pretended to—and pinched her brows together in deep meditation. Oh, she was the most maddening bit of young womanhood—But, there, no Barney for me.
"I—might," she decided at last. "It would be rather droll, you know, and I wonder how you'd manage it; I'm not very tiny, and I rather think it wouldn't be easy to—er—carry me off. Would you wear a mask—a black velvet mask? I should insist upon black velvet. And would you say: 'Gadzooks, madam! I command you not to scream!' Would you?" She leaned toward me, and her eyes—well, for downright torture, women are at times perfectly fiendish.
I caught her hand, and I held it, too, in spite of her. That far I was master.
"No," I told her grimly. "If I saw that you were going to do anything so foolish as to scream, I should just kiss you, and—kiss you till you were glad to be sensible about it."
Well, she tried first to look calmly amused; then she tried to look insulted, and to freeze me into sanity. She ended, however, by looking a good bit confused, and by blushing scarlet. I had won that far. I kept her hand held tight in mine; I could feel it squirm to get away, and it felt—oh, thunder!