“That will do, Boniface!” cried the other, standing between the landlord and Mrs. Clive, who had risen. Then giving a smirk and a flourishing bow, he said: “Madam, you look to be a sensible woman.”
“I vow, sir,” said Kitty, “I have never been accused of being sensible before. If you cannot pay a woman a better compliment than to call her sensible, you would be wise to refrain from the attempt to flatter her.”
The pause that followed was broken by the self-satisfied chuckle of the landlord. He seemed to take credit to himself for Kitty's sally. He looked at the stranger, then at the lady; his face puckered with a smile. Then he walked to the door, and gave another chuckle as he glanced round with his hand on the door.
“Mistress Kitty has taken the measure of my fine gentleman,” he muttered, with a shrewd wink; “there's no need for me here.”
His chuckle broadened into a guffaw as he went down the passage, having closed the door.
“Pray, madam, be not offended,” the man who was facing Kitty managed to say, after an interval. “If I called you sensible, I most humbly apologise. No offence was meant, madam.”
“I believe that, sir; but no woman likes to be called sensible. You may call one a silly piece, a romp, or a heartless coquette without offence; but never a sensible woman.”
“I forgot myself for the moment, madam, owing to the treatment I received at the hands of that bumpkin Boniface. I am, in what is doubtless your condition—awaiting the coach, and I objected to be relegated to the kitchen.”
“Faith, sir,” said Kitty, with a laugh, as she returned to the settle, “I have passed some pleasant enough hours in a kitchen.”
“And so have I, madam, when the wenches were well favoured,” said the man, assuming the sly look of a man who had seen life. [Men who fancied they knew the world were as plentiful in the last century as they are in the present.] “Yes, madam; but then I went into the kitchen by choice, not on compulsion.”