"Now I'm going to talk to you," Rivington announced.
"Yes?" she said rather faintly.
He lay back with his arms under his head, and stared up through the beech boughs to the cloudless evening sky.
"I want you first of all to remember," he said, "that what I said a little while ago I meant—and shall mean for all time. I will never do anything, Chirpy, against your will."
He spoke deliberately. He was puffing the smoke upward in long spirals.
"That is quite understood, is it?" he asked, as she did not speak.
"I think so," said Ernestine slowly.
"I want you to be quite sure," he said. "Otherwise, what I am going to say may startle you."
"Don't frighten me!" she begged, in a whisper.
"My dear child, I sha'n't frighten you," he rejoined. "You may frighten yourself. That is what I am trying to guard against."