And as she turned a face of exaggerated color to him, “By the Lord, but you’re a little witch!” George cried.
“George, do let Pendennis trot again!”
“I won’t!”
She clucked to the horse. “Get up, Pendennis! Trot! Go on! Commence!”
Pendennis paid no attention; she meant nothing to him, and George laughed at her fondly. “You are the prettiest thing in this world, Lucy!” he exclaimed. “When I see you in winter, in furs, with your cheeks red, I think you’re prettiest then, but when I see you in summer, in a straw hat and a shirtwaist and a duck skirt and white gloves and those little silver buckled slippers, and your rose-coloured parasol, and your cheeks not red but with a kind of pinky glow about them, then I see I must have been wrong about the winter! When are you going to drop the ‘almost’ and say we’re really engaged?”
“Oh, not for years! So there’s the answer, and let’s trot again.”
But George was persistent; moreover, he had become serious during the last minute or two. “I want to know,” he said. “I really mean it.”
“Let’s don’t be serious, George,” she begged him hopefully. “Let’s talk of something pleasant.”
He was a little offended. “Then it isn’t pleasant for you to know that I want to marry you?”
At this she became as serious as he could have asked; she looked down, and her lip quivered like that of a child about to cry. Suddenly she put her hand upon one of his for just an instant, and then withdrew it.