“So do we,” said both girls eagerly. After a pause Kate clasped her knees with her locked fingers, and rocking backwards and forwards, said, “Milly and I have got an idea, and don't you say 'No' to it. We've had it ever since that brute talked in that way. Now, through him, we know more about this Mr. Spindler's family connections than you do; and we know all the trouble you and he'll have in getting up this party. You understand? Now, we first want to know what Spindler's like. Is he a savage, bearded creature, like the miners we saw on the boat?”
Mrs. Price said that, on the contrary, he was very gentle, soft-spoken, and rather good-looking.
“Young or old?”
“Young,—in fact, a mere boy, as you may judge from his actions,” returned Mrs. Price, with a suggestive matronly air.
Kate here put up a long-handled eyeglass to her fine gray eyes, fitted it ostentatiously over her aquiline nose, and then said, in a voice of simulated horror, “Aunt Huldy,—this revelation is shocking!”
Mrs. Price laughed her usual frank laugh, albeit her brown cheek took upon it a faint tint of Indian red. “If that's the wonderful idea you girls have got, I don't see how it's going to help matters,” she said dryly.
“No, that's not it? We really have an idea. Now look here.”
Mrs. Price “looked here.” This process seemed to the superficial observer to be merely submitting her waist and shoulders to the arms of her nieces, and her ears to their confidential and coaxing voices.
Twice she said “it couldn't be thought of,” and “it was impossible;” once addressed Kate as “You limb!” and finally said that she “wouldn't promise, but might write!”