“And then what?” said my aunt Milly, smiling.
“Well, I don’t know,” says Flat. “Is that clock of yours right, Mrs Keene?”
“It is; but I am fearful that your thoughts run faster than the clock, Mr Flat; you are thinking of the dress-bugle for dinner.”
“No, I was not.”
“Then you were thinking of yourself?”
“No, I wasn’t, Mrs Keene,” said Flat, rising, and walking out of the shop.
“I’ll tell you,” said he, turning round as he went out, “what I was thinking of, Mrs Keene; not of myself,—I was thinking of my bull pup.”
My mother burst out a laughing as the lieutenant disappeared. “I was not far wrong when I said he was thinking of himself,” said she, “for a calf is a sort of bull pup.”
At this sally Captain Bridgeman laughed, and danced about the shop; at last he said, “Poor Flat! Miss Amelia, he’s desperately in love with you.”
“That’s more than I am with him,” said Amelia, calmly.