“I will go and make you a lemon-squash,” she said coldly; “you are possibly thirsty.”
“Thirsty!” said Hugh, “my outward and visible dust is nothing to what I’ve swallowed! Make me six lemon-squashes. But what’s the matter, Kit?”
She made no answer, merely turned one severe glance on him and went off to the pantry.
“Do tell me, Kate,” he said, after he had lowered the large jugful she brought him, and [p138] still she had made no further remark. “Nothing’s happened to the bike, has it? You’ve not smashed your precious nose? No, it seems intact. Has the low-spirited Ellen given notice? Has Octavius been charging more than elevenpence for his bacon?”
But Kate preserved a stony silence; she even picked up her book again and affected to read. He drew the volume out of her hands.
“I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.”
“I don’t feel as if I could ever be merry again with you, Hugh,” she said.
“And here have I,” he said, addressing the verandah ceiling, “passed through dangers enough to make me loved, Othello-wise, for themselves alone. Dangers of culverts, dangers of sharp turnings, dangers of blue metal, of precipices, of wandering cows, of naphtha explosions. Here have I turned myself into a demd damp moist unpleasant body just to get to her sheltering bosom and she repulses me like this.”
“It is because I am what I have never been before, Hugh,” said Kate, “and that is ashamed of you.”
“Ashamed? Of me, my joy!” said Hugh, but he knew now that it was the interview outrage that was disturbing Kate. “It knows it is talking demd charming sweetness but [p139] naughty fibs. It knows it is not ashamed of its own popolorum tibby.”