“You’ve got nerve enough to do anything,” Eleanor assured him, but she meant it admiringly, and seriously.
“I haven’t the nerve to go on with a moral conversation in which you are getting the better of me at every turn,” Peter laughed. “I’m sure it’s unintentional, but you make me feel like a good deal of an ass, Eleanor.”
“That means a donkey, doesn’t it?”
“It does, and by jove, I believe that you’re glad of it.”
“I do rather like it,” said Eleanor; “of course you don’t really feel like a donkey to me. I mean I don’t make you feel like one, but it’s funny just pretending that you mean it.”
“Oh! woman, woman,” Peter cried. “Beulah tried to convey something of the fact that you always got the better of every one in your modest unassuming way, but I never quite believed it before. At any rate it’s bedtime, and here comes Mrs. Finnigan to put you to bed. Kiss me good night, sweetheart.” 112
Eleanor flung her arms about his neck, in her first moment of abandonment to actual emotional self-expression if Peter had only known it.
“I will never really get the better of you in my life, Uncle Peter,” she promised him passionately.