“Well, that would have been much better, for then you wouldn’t have been worried, and you wouldn’t have made me cry,” said she with conviction.
George had another sudden and vivid perception of the stumbling-blocks that stood in the way of her moral education.
“I would rather, little one,” he said gravely, “pass days full of worry and nights without sleep than think it possible you could tell me a falsehood.”
She looked in his face wonderingly, and then patted his cheek and laughed.
“Well, I don’t want to tell you falsehoods,” she said indifferently, and then paused, having at that moment discovered a new and delightful pastime in brushing up his moustache the wrong way with her finger, and laughing at the effect. “What a beautiful mouth you’ve got!” she exclaimed suddenly, in ardent and sincere admiration. “It’s smaller than mine, I think,” she continued dubiously, and she proceeded gravely to take the measurement of the one against the other, with a wicked look out of her eyes as they came close to his which made George suspect while he yielded to the temptation, that it had been deliberately formed to put an end to a discussion which the little lady found very tedious.
CHAPTER XIV.
The moral fibre of a man as deeply in love as George was is not at its strongest on his wedding day.
So he gave up in despair his first lesson in the moral duties, and whispered to her such pretty babble as comes up to the lips of all lovers in the first day of their happiness, and, being perfectly happy and inclined at all issues to be satisfied with his bargain, it was some time before he noticed that his bride’s interest in his love-prattle was growing fainter and fainter, until at last she scarcely gave more, as her share of the conversation, than an occasional nod or a weary little smile.
“Are you tired, dearest?” he asked solicitously, wakening suddenly to a consciousness that all was not well with her, as she began to move restlessly about in his arms, and her eyes roved round the room as if she found it impossible to keep her attention fixed on what he was saying.
“No, no,” she answered hastily, and she clasped her arms round his neck again, but with a distinct subsidence of her first outbursts of spontaneous affection.