‘Don’t you chaff me,’ said Bill, still rolling her golden head upon his shoulder, and beaming on him with those eyes of innocence. ‘I might be having a sweetheart of my own one of these days. Don’t you think that’s likely?’
‘I don’t mind betting,’ Paul answered, ‘that you’ll have fifty—’
Bill sat up straight in her deck-chair, clasped her hands with a vivid gesture, and looked skyward with a glance pure as the heavens themselves.
‘What a lark!’ she breathed—’ oh, what a lark! Fifty? Do you think they’d all come together?’ she asked with a sudden eagerness, as if her life depended on the answer.
‘Say, five at a time,’ said Paul—‘ten per annum; that will give you five years to deal with them, beginning, we will say, about two years from now.’
‘But that’s where I want to come in,’ said Bill ‘I want to begin at once.’
‘There is no need to be in a hurry,’ Paul answered. ‘There is plenty of time before you.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Bill thoughtfully. ‘But, then, you see, I don’t want to waste any of it. Now, I just want to tell you what I want you to do for me. I want you to din it into Madge’s ears, morning, noon, and night, that it’s time that I should do my hair up and wear long frocks.’
‘And if I undertake that mission?’ Paul asked
‘We’re friends,’ cried Bill, rising and holding out her hand ‘You’ll see,’ she added, ‘I can be just as nice as I have been nasty.’