"Dare say you've put up with Frances though for Jack's sake!" I let her have it coldly, deliberately. "Brother Jack has been a sort of compensation—that's it, eh?"
And I shot her a foxy wink!
That is, I almost did—pulled up, though, just on the brink. By Jove, gave me cold marrows for an instant, thinking how I might have compromised myself, you know. Besides, I could spare her that—had rubbed it in so devilish raw, anyhow. That is, you would have thought so; for that sort of thing said to a normal Yankee girl would have stirred her pride or unchained the jolly lightnings from her eyes—you know!
But dashed if this imported freak didn't suddenly nod with a sort of chokey snuffle and reach out her hand for mine.
"How you do understand!" she crooned unblushingly, and she leaked a big cold tear down upon my hand and let another splash my cuff—and Jenkins hadn't come with my things yet, dash it! "I do try to be patient about Francis for Jacky's sake—he asked me to: and I do try not to mind the way things are run, but oh, Mr. Lightnut, what this place needs is a head!" She almost squeezed my hand, and blinked damply at me out of her pasty face. "And then," she snuffled, "I do so want to make a home for my father and my brothers. They have never known what it was to have a home—think of it!"
I didn't want to think of it—besides, I didn't believe it. I knew people have to have homes, dash it—it's the law. If they go in for that sort of thing—not having homes, you know—they're arrested. Still, in a rum country like China, it might be different, of course. However, I didn't take time to give this much thought, for I was so devilish floored—irritated, you know—at the girl's cold-blooded, brazen effrontery.
By Jove, I wondered if I could pink her!
I wasn't sure. I had gone at her in a cunning, subtle way: the hand of steel in the glove of what's-its-name, you know; the curving, velvet thrust of the needle rapier—all that sort of rot—and she had merely given me back a Roland for my what's-its-name. I felt a bit dashed, you know.
Idea seized me that perhaps, though, something more brutally direct would—
"See here," I said, fixing my monocle sternly and folding my arms—for I had got back my hand under pretense of fixing my part. "You don't mean to say that Jack would ever ask you to take charge here!"