The infatuated Stacey had reached the point of thinking this repartee if possible more killing than his own.
“Ha! That's for Miss Cressy to say.”
But the young lady leaning back against the lintel with the comfortable ease of being irresponsibly diverted, sagely pointed out that that was the function of the arbitrator.
“Ah well, suppose we begin by giving up Seth Davis, eh? You see that I'm pretty well posted, Miss Cressy.”
“You alarm me,” said Cressy sweetly. “But I reckon he HAD given up.”
“He was in the running that night at the ball. Looked half savage while I was dancing with you. Wanted to eat me.”
“Poor Seth! And he used to be SO particular in his food,” said the witty Cressy.
Mr. Stacey was convulsed. “And there's Mr. Dabney—Uncle Ben,” he continued, “eh? Very quiet but very sly. A dark horse, eh? Pretends to take lessons for the sake of being near some one, eh? Would he were a boy again because somebody else is a girl?”
“I should be frightened of you if you lived here always,” returned Cressy with invincible naivete; “but perhaps then you wouldn't know so much.”
Stacey simply accepted this as a compliment. “And there's Masters,” he said insinuatingly.