“How aggravating of you! I was already pluming myself on a nice compliment. Well, you have been in my thoughts enough, I can tell you.”
“Have I? That is why I have felt cold for such a time, I suppose.”
“It sha’n’t be my fault if you feel cold ever again. Do you know what fools we are to sit here? I’m in a fine glow, myself; but how about you?”
“O! your arms are about me.”
“You ought to feel them like stove pipes, if they come anywhere near expressing their own ardour.”
“Please be a little less violent in your language, Richard. Do you know you are rather a savage creature altogether.”
“You shall tame me. I have had my excuses, Ira—I really have.”
“I know, my dear lord. How shouldn’t I know indeed!”
She put up a penitent mouth. Her sweetness and submission quite overcame me.
“Richard,” she whispered, with her face very close to mine, “do you know that, when you—when you cried out to stop me just now, it was the first time in all your life you had called me Ira?”