"Entirely," Danvers returned solemnly, but with a laugh shining through his long black lashes.
"Then I'd better not meet with her—I, who have so many failings."
"Have you failings?" Dandy asked, and the teasing tone left him. "I've yet to find them."
And at this Nancy broke into a laugh so funny and contagious that the two of us joined with her.
"Have I failings?" she repeated. "That I have! And so many 'twould be a day's work to name them.
"Sometimes," she began, "I make light of other folks' religion when I disagree with it—and that's little short of scandalous. And I belittle the people whom I don't like—and there's no breeding in that; and where a friend is concerned I'm like the Stewarts, 'Back to back, and a claymore in each hand,' and——"
"Ye're right in that," Danvers and I broke in like a chorus.
"And sometimes," she went on, and the humor she found in these revelations concerning herself was a droll thing to see, "sometimes I use bad language——"
We men broke into a roar of laughter at this.
"Once, I remember," she said, with the gleam in her eye, "I danced till three in the morning at Peggy MacBride's wedding, and getting out of the coach twisted my arm till I thought I'd broken it. About four of the same morning I rose with a raging tooth, and crossing the room for laudanum, I struck the elbow of the injured arm against a chest of drawers, and before I thought I said——"