“I dare say!” she answered, smiling.
“Mammy, don’t you smell a rat?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why these preparations? Why this introduction of the topic of husbands?”
“Do explain! what new nonsense is this?”
“I’ll tell you, Mammy! I’m going to be married!”
“Bertie!”
She frowned with displeasure.
“True!”
“I don’t like to hear you say such things, even in joke. A boy of eighteen—”