"We were talking of love, I think," says Rodney, innocently, as though the tender passion as subsisting between the opposite sexes had been the subject of the conversation.
"Of love generally?—no," with a disdainful glance,—"merely of your love of comfort."
"Yes, quite so: that is exactly what I meant," returns he, agreeably. It was not what he meant; but that doesn't count. "How awfully clever you are," he says, presently, alluding to her management of the little pats, which, to say truth, are faring but ill at her hands.
"Not clever," says Mona. "If I were clever I should not take for granted—as I always do—that what people say they must mean. I myself could not wear a double face."
"That is just like me," says Mr. Rodney, unblushingly—"the very image of me."
"Is it?"—witheringly. Then, with some impatience, "You will be far happier in an arm-chair: do go into the parlor. There is really no reason why you should remain here."
"There is,—a reason not to be surpassed. And as to the parlor,"—in a melancholy tone,—"I could not be happy there, or anywhere, just at present. Unless, indeed,"—this in a very low but carefully distinct tone,—"it be here!"
A pause. Mona mechanically but absently goes on with her work, avoiding all interchange of glances with her deceitful lover. The deceitful lover is plainly meditating a fresh attack. Presently he overturns an empty churn and seats himself on the top of it in a dejected fashion.
"I never saw the easy-chair I could compare with this," he says, as though to himself, his voice full of truth.
This is just a little too much. Mona gives way. Standing well back from her butter, she lets her pretty rounded bare arms fall lightly before her to their full length, and as her fingers clasp each other she turns to Rodney and breaks into a peal of laughter sweet as music.