"'Good'? Why good?"
He said "Oh!" and fumbled in the pocket of his Norfolk for his pipe.
"Oh, perhaps I meant she'd be all the more company for you down here. People in love are poisonously poor company, I find!" he went on, turning to me as if with a burst of confidence. Then he twinkled, gave me a swift glance, opened his lips as if to ask a question; shut them.
I knew what he meant.
Quickly and definitely I snapped out the answer to the question he hadn't asked.
"No! I'm not engaged either!" I said. Then, carrying this war of questions into the odd creature's country, I added, "Are you?"
"Why? I suppose you mean you find me poisonously poor company?" he asked, with a defiant jerk of the head in that scarecrow's tweed hat of his.
"Not at all," I said politely. "But are you?"
Instead of answering he stopped and glanced to the right. There was a break in the hedge.
"Shall we take this short cut home through the fields?" he said.