"Well, only a few—a few kisses."
"Hum!" said Hunston, "that was excusable. It is a sort of pilfering which I would willingly indulge in myself."
"I dare say," answered Marietta saucily, "but I have discovered how to use my weapons in self-defence."
"What weapons?"
"These."
She held up her ten pretty little claws. A tiny hand they were mounted on, too.
Hunston surveyed it with the eye of a connoisseur, and looked the admiration he wished to convey quite extravagantly enough for a vain woman to understand his meaning.
"Exquisite," he said. "It would be flattery even to be scratched by such models."
She laughed.
He resumed.