"Oh, I say!"—I leaned nearer, chuckling—"your father pretends to think her a most beautiful and winning girl—fancy!" And my face stretched itself in such a jolly grin that I could hardly hold my glass.
She bent toward me, smiling adorably. "You mean this—er—'Miss Kirkland'?"
I nodded chortlingly.
She peered at me through her long what-you-call-'ems—oh, such a way!
"But you don't think so, do you?" How sweetly, how fetchingly she said it!
"Me?" I gasped. By Jove, in my horror, I lost my grip upon my jolly grammar. "Oh, I say now! I think the frump—this Miss Kirkland, you know—is a fright—regular freak, dash it! I told the judge so!"
"You—you—"
"Of course!" And I shrugged disgustedly, making the ugliest grimace I possibly could. "Why, dash it, if I were a woman and had a face like hers, I never would have left China, or England—or wherever her jolly home was—no, sir!"
She caught her breath with a little gasp—then she was off again! This time she rested her arms upon the rail behind and buried her head in them, her lovely shoulders jiggling up and down, her sobbing laughter sending her off at last into a spell of coughing.
"Oh!" she breathed, lifting at last her gloriously blushing face and dabbing at it with her ridiculous little handkerchief, "oh, you'll kill me—I know you will!"