“Yo’ all talk lak some kind old auntie!” she said. “Why, gyrl, yo’ ahn’t old’s Ah am. Mah heaht’s wohn to a frazzle. Ah’ve been engaged befo’, oh, a dozen tahms, Ah reckon—mo’n yo’ all evah dreamed of!”
“A dozen times!” exclaimed Emily, in real amazement, and then with a touch of the spirit of their old intimacy she said:
“But you never told me, Dade, only that once!”
“Co’se not,” said Dade; “they really didn’t count. Ah was on and off with them so quick. Ah wanted to wait to see if—if—the’d take befo’ writing yo’, but they nevah did, only the one with the baron, po’ ol’ soul!”
“Did that one take?” asked Emily, with a languid return to the remoteness her own experience had drawn her to, and with a sigh, also, that her heart so quickly lost the perfume of the youth that a moment before had been wafted into it.
Dade was serious an instant.
“Well, yes. Ah thought it did, but yo’ know, Em, those Eu’opeans ah simply im-possible, that’s all.”
“And you were engaged to twelve of them! I thought the chaperon was an institution in Europe. Yours couldn’t have watched you very carefully.”
“Oh, they’re just to see that the gyrls dew mah’y some one—that’s all—but——”
“You escaped?”