“M-Miss Hoffman, I n-never d-dreamed——”
Miss Hoffman turned upon him swiftly.
“Never have I heard anything like it—never! You bring me out here willy-nilly, and by way of entertainment you virtually accuse me of throwing myself at your head.”
“I never!” said Jeff indignantly. “I didn’t——”
Miss Hoffman faced him crouchingly and shook an indictment from her fingers.
“First, you imply that I enticed you to come; second, expecting you, I dressed to catch your eye; third, I was watching eagerly for you——”
“Come—I say now!” The baited and exasperated victim walked headlong into the trap. “The first thing you did was to ask me if I was lame? Wasn’t that question meant to find out who I was? When I answered, ‘Not—very,’ didn’t you know at once that it was me?”
“There! That proves exactly what I was just saying,” raged the delighted trapper. “You don’t even deny it! You say in so many words that I have been courting you! I had to say something—didn’t I? You wouldn’t! You were limping, so I asked you if you were lame. What else could I have said? Did you want me to stand there like a stuffed Egyptian mummy? That’s the thanks a girl gets for trying to help a great, awkward, blundering butter-fingers! Oh, if you could just see yourself! The irresistible conqueror! Not altogether unprincipled though! You are capable of compunction. I’ll give you credit for that. Alarmed at your easy success, you try to spare me. It is noble of you—noble! You drag me out here, force a quarrel upon me——”
“Oh, by Jove now! Really!” Stung by the poignant injustice of crowding events, Jeff took the bit in his teeth and rushed to destruction. “Really, you must see yourself that I couldn’t drag you out here! I have never been in that hall before. I didn’t know the lay of the ground. I didn’t even know that little side room was there. I thought you pressed my arm a little——” So the brainless colt, in the quicksands, flounders deeper with each effort to extricate himself.
If Miss Hoffman had been angry before she was furious now.