The Lady didn't seem to consider it important at all. She looked at her skirts instead and smoothed them very tidily.
"It's a—It's a pleasant day—isn't it?" said our Uncle Peter.
"V—very," said the Lady. Quite suddenly she looked up at him. Her cheeks were pink. She seemed to want to speak but didn't know quite how. She looked more surprised than ever. She bent forward very suddenly and stared and stared at him.
"Why—Why you're the gentleman," she said, "who was in the Fruit Store the day I bought the Alligator pears and dropped my pocket-book down behind the trash-barrel?"
"Also the day you bought the Red Mackintosh Apples," said our Uncle Peter. "The Grocer cheated you outrageously on them.—Also the day you wore the bunch of white violets and pricked your finger so brutally,—also the day on the ferry when there was a slight collision with a tug-boat and I had the privilege of—of——."
The Lady looked very haughty.
"It was the day of the Alligator Pears—that I referred to," she said. "The only day in my recollection!" Very positively she said it,—"the only day in my recollection." But all the time that she said it her cheeks got pinker and pinker. It was when she looked in the glass and saw how mistaken her positiveness looked that her cheeks got so pink. Tap—Tap—Tap her foot stamped on the rug. "Did—Did you know who it was going to be——when you brought the dog?" she said. "That is,—did you know when you first saw the advertisement in the paper." Her white forehead got all black and frowny. "How in the world did you know—my name?" she said.
Our Uncle Peter made an expression on his face. It was the expression that our Mother calls his "Third-Helping-of-Apple-Pie Expression,"—bold and unashamed.
"I asked the Grocer," he said.
"It was a—a great liberty," said the Lady.